


Love Me Not

by natasha_carmen



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Cancer, Death, F/M, Football | Soccer, High School, Music, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-02-23 09:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 64,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2543198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natasha_carmen/pseuds/natasha_carmen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex isn't a normal girl already. She lives in the bad side of town with only men as her friends and a mother who is never really around. What happens when her and the man she thinks she loves are arrested and she's told her life has been a lie? Can she deal with falling for the mysterious Irish boy, having a newfound twin brother who's girlfriend is betraying him, and going from one end of life to the other?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Alex**

“Come on Alex! It’s only fair,” my friend yelled at me as I stood on the rock remaining in my bra and underwear. How did I get up here, being told to strip and jump off a twenty foot cliff into the water where my best friend was already naked? Well let me explain a bit about myself to you to help you understand my situation.

My name is Alexandra Marie Carter and I turned 18 years old yesterday on August 4th, now I know it’s not all that impressive being eighteen but we’ll get to that later. Being 18 was the least of my celebrations, or at least that's what I thought while on that rock. I mean I get to vote, which feminists fought so damn hard for according to them, but nothing else important happened until 19. I mean who really bought porn anymore? They had so many sites that you could watch it for free and lets be serious, I was a girl.

My whole life I’d lived with my mom only in a trailer in Dartmouth Nova Scotia. From a young age I had been called scum and told I was going to amount to nothing because my dad was not around and my mom worked as a stripper. This came from her as well, I often dream about my father coming and taking me away from this hell that I was forced to live in everyday. This made it extremely hard to make friends in school, because they were either too good for me in their mind or terrified of me and what I would do when I finally broke from all the bullying. It didn’t help that I was extremely quiet my whole life unless I needed to stand up for myself, I was too scared of what people would think of me.

The naked guy swimming in the water in nothing but his birthday suit is Max, a Dylan O’Brien look alike who moved into the trailer next to me when he was 8, I was still 7 at the time and he’ll never let me forget that. He instantly became my only friend and protected me like the brother I never had, which was probably mostly because he could do all the talking while I sat and listened contently.

When we turned ten he became friends with Luke, Sawyer and Carter, who all also happened to be male and lived right next to each other on the street over from us. I was introduced to the group by Max, and we all instantly became each others life lines. In school none of us made any friends so it wasn’t like we had anyone else. They became my family while my mom was always gone and I had no one around.

Now to why I am standing up on this cliff about to strip down to nothing, well as I said yesterday was my 18th birthday, which to the guys is a big deal because they can buy the “good porn” finally. Boys will be boys I guess and I will continue to not understand any of them. This led to them getting me drunk in the field last night and playing truth or dare with them, which I don’t remember much of besides then asking me who I liked and me responding by drinking more. That night I slept cuddled up to Max in the back of his pick up truck, which was exactly where I wanted to be. I loved Max, more than just a brother, but I was always too scared to tell him. When I turned 16 things started to get heated between us. We’d go skinny dipping, make out, I even did oral with him at 17, which I have never done again with anyone in my life. I gave him my heart even though I was aware that it was strictly physical to him. He got something out of me but never cared if I was turned on enough to return the favor, not that I ever really was. I just wanted to please him a lot of the time.

Now, something that is important to this story is that we promised to be best friends forever the day after my 8th birthday. This made Max dub it our “friendship-aversary” which to him meant we had to celebrate it together every year. Last year Max informed me on my birthday that he had met a girl at school and they were dating, I didn’t know her because she was from the better side of town but that he thought he was in love. It hurt to hear that but I was happy if he was happy, at least that’s what I told him when he told me. The next day I faked sick to avoid hanging out with him the next day and ended up sneaking off and going to get drunk with Carter instead, who told me that Max was an idiot and that he didn’t even deserve me as a best friend, Carter had never been my favourite out of the others but I had known that Luke would never give me alcohol.

This gave me a reputation the last year though. I had “slept” with Carter that night, which made every other guy in our group but Max and Luke say I had slept with them as well. The all knew my pathetic crush on Max but I was the “hot piece of ass” in the trailer park that every guy wanted to have but I promised myself I would wait for the love of my life, who I thought was Max. I didn’t want to be seen as a slut but Max was always with his girlfriend if he wasn’t working and I just wanted to get his attention somehow, I missed having my best friend, so I let them say it about me. I didn’t argue with them and let the school believe what they wanted to believe. I hated that Max was never with us anymore and I thought acting out might bring him to me, it might make him care again.

This year was different than last year though, this year I fell asleep on my eighteenth birthday in Max’s arms and woke up in the same position on our 10th anniversary of being friends, and it was pure bliss. It was the first time in years I felt even a little bit safe and I loved it. Any heartbreak from the year before was forgotten and put aside a because he promised me that this day would be completely about us and no one else. None of the boys were invited like years past and his girlfriend was out of town for the weekend meaning she wouldn’t be doing her usual drop in to make sure he was behaving.

Now how I got onto this cliff is a little more complicated of a story, because I don’t exactly remember it fully. When we woke up Max drove us to the field where we went every year and where we spent a lot of our time as kids, just him and I like before the guys came along. It was a different field than the ones the boys and us go to, this one was right by the trailer park. He claimed since ten years was such a special milestone that we had to celebrate it in a special way, which was when the tequila and acid came out and into play. It was not until now that I noticed how messed we actually were. I don’t remember most of the stuff I did, or that I said and neither does he.

He had bet me that I wouldn’t jump off the cliff with him naked, and I didn’t want to step back from the challenge, he was the only one that I was truly competitive with. So here I am, clad in only my underwear having Max trash talk me from the water. I could only thank god that no families had decided to come for a swim today as the lake was completely public and we were not hidden from the beach at all, the last thing I needed was creepy little freshmen checking out my naked body. I just closed my eyes and took a deep breath as I fully stripped off my underwear and jumped into the air plummeting down faster that I thought I was going to.

The fall was quick and easy, and I landed in the water perfectly, not doing a belly flop or a johnny ass cracker like I had in prior years. As I came up from the water all I heard was Max mutter “shit” as he swam towards his cloths quickly. I was confused, his mood changed so drastically in such a short amount of time. I was still fairly intoxicated with the tequila and adrenaline from the fall flowing through my veins, I said no to the acid. This made it take me a while to notice he was actually somewhat panicking as he grabbed his cloths and shoved his shorts on his legs. I looked over only to see a squad car with it’s lights on parked right beside the water, and that sobered me up pretty quickly. This was not good, I thought, this was not good at all. My mom was going to kill me, if she could ever afford bail.

***

“Lucy is going to kill me…” Was all Max could say as we sat in the police station. Lucy was his girlfriend and if him getting arrested and then let off with a warning was her reason to break up with him I really didn’t see what he saw in her. I mean, my mom was going to be mad sure but I mean she wasn’t going to kill me per say, maybe disown me or kick me out of the house, which was a normal occurrence for me.

“Well you shut up please,” I said looking down at my hands trying to want to cry but I just wanted to hit something. I could handle him being mad at himself, I could handle him even being upset over his parents, I couldn’t handle him bringing up her though. This was our day, and even if we were in a jail cell I still wanted this to be our day and for her to stay out of it.

“What Alex? Why should I shut up?” Max stood up and started to pace the width of the cell. “We got into this fucking mess, and I’m sorry but I don’t want my girlfriend breaking up with me because of some stupid thoughtless mistake I made.” He didn’t look at me when he spoke, which made the blow even worse and me even angrier. “I thought I could choose you over her, I thought that I could be everything she wanted me to be while staying friends with you but I guess I can’t. You’re just some girl who sluts around with all of our group of friends.”

I expected tears to fall finally, I expected to break down right then and there and be sad over his actions right now but all I felt was blinding anger. I was purely seeing red at everything he was saying, and I couldn’t understand why. I didn’t even care that he was tearing my heart into two pieces, I would never let any guy walk over me like that, I couldn’t. I would just never let it happen. I stood up and walked right over to him wearing only a button up shirt which was far too big for me because I had stupidly left my clothes at the top of the cliff. Before I could say anything that I would regret a police officer came to the cell looking like he was ready to break up a fight if one was going to start.

“Max Johnson?” He asked looking over at Max. “Your bail has been posted, grab your things and lets go.” Without a single glance my way he walked out the door, he had nothing to grab, he had everything he needed outside the cell. Once he left the hallway I heard Lucy sobbing as he profusely apologized to her. She was from the good side of town, and she must’ve posted his bail. Heaven knows he would never have called his father, he would’ve beaten him senseless. I couldn’t care less anymore though, she was the one he wanted. He didn’t want the trailer park slut who had been in love with him since I was 10, he wanted the perfect head cheerleader from the good side of town.

“Alexandra Carter?” The officer asked after the door shut behind Louis.

“Is there anyone else here?” I scoffed as I sat back down on the bench calming down finally and feeling more like myself. I was defeated but couldn’t get myself to care what even happened to me. I was just trailer trash, and I did say that I sleep with every single guy in our group, though I didn’t actually have sex with them. And now all I could do was regret it. “Is my mom here? I know she probably couldn’t afford bail but…”

“Alexandra, your mother isn’t who she tells you she is…” I just stared at him like he had three heads. “Your mother abducted you when you were in the hospital with the flu at two years old, she's not your mother she’s you kidnapper…” I couldn’t get myself to believe anything he was telling me, him this couldn’t be true. My mother would never do anything like that to me, she wasn’t smart enough to do that. I had always dreamed of hearing something like this about my life but I did not believe it one single bit. I turned away expecting him to laugh or walk away but all he did was come over and lay his hand on my shoulder while muttering “I’m sorry kid,” and walking away. I just stared at the wall in front of me.


	2. Chapter 2

**Alex**

“Mackenzie?” I heard a woman yell from down the hall. I bitterly laughed, I guess this Mackenzie chick was going to get to experience this, whatever this was. Maybe I was being pranked, I would get to meet Ashton Kutcher who I absolutely loved, maybe Max set it up and this was all a joke. “Where is she? Where is my baby girl?” I heard her yell right outside of my room, I wish my mother would love me enough to yell at a police officer to find me. She didn’t even love me enough to come and try and post bail for me. 

“Oh my god,” she yelled as she ran into my room and over to me pulling me right into her arms. I tensed up at the contact, I didn’t know this woman, why was she running to me like we were long lost best friends or sisters. “I can’t believe we found you, I can’t believe my baby girl is alive!” The woman sobbed as she held me in her arms rocking back and forth slightly like she was trying to comfort me. “I’ll never let anything happen to you again, oh my god, she took you so far from home. You must have been terrified, my little baby being taken on a plane with the flu…” There was a thick British accent in this woman’s voice. She couldn’t be my mother I was a Canadian citizen, had lived here my whole life. “Louis can you believe she’s here! Oh my god, Mackenzie is alive!” 

“My name is Alexandra, I’m sorry, you must have the wrong person.” I muttered the best I could while being strangled by this crazy lady, I hated talking to strangers but I really didn’t want her to have to go through all of this twice today. “Your loved one must be down the hall, my mother isn’t here yet.”

“I am your mother, Mackenzie.” She cried pulling away from me. “She told you your name was Alexandra? That monster hid everything from you didn’t she…” She cried grabbing my shoulders and looking straight into my eyes. “Mackenzie, do you remember me at all?” I shook my head no slowly, I really had no idea who she was. She looked like I had just told her she was dying though. “Oh my god… Louis” her voice broke on the last word. “Can you believe that that horrible woman brain washed our baby.” Was her husband here with her?

“Yeah,” I heard a male voice say sarcasm dripping from it, the voice was not one of a man though. “Our baby, who was stolen when I was two, bloody brilliant isn’t it.” I looked to the corner of the room that the officer had taken me to and saw him standing there, and I guess his name was Louis. I had thought at first that maybe he was my father and that’s why she was sobbing but he was far too young to be my father, he looked no older than I was. He looked nothing like me, medium height for a boy, Justin Bieber style auburn hair, bright blue eyes which matched mine, and a bit of chub on his stomach that could be seen through his t-shirt. I had dark brown hair that I now died blonde, was on the shorter side, and though I wasn’t stick thin I wasn’t chubby at all. “Hi, Louis, your twin that you definitely do not remember having.” He said to me nodding in my direction and smiled an obviously fake smile.

It was strange but as he spoke to me it was like something inside me just clicked. I looked at the woman who claimed to be my mother to see if the same thing happened with her but it didn’t, she was still a stranger to me. It felt like something that I had always been missing was finally back, the hole that not even Max could fill was full again just by being around this Louis guy. On instinct I stood right up and ran to him throwing my arms around his neck and nuzzling my face into his chest. He smelled like mint and smoke, it felt homey and natural unlike how Max smelt. He hesitantly hugged me back and when he did it felt like I was even more complete. This was what I had needed the past 10 years, not Max’s affection or love. Thinking of Max and what had just happened stung though, not in hurt but in aggravation. It was going to be a hard pill to swallow that we weren’t even friends anymore, and what he said caused a cut that would take even longer to heal. I had loved him, and I couldn’t change that and whatever this was with Louis was not going to change any of that either. I mean, he might fill the friendship hole but I would never fall in love with him, that would be gross and illegal.

I heard a sob come from behind us as I felt Louis start to rub my back soothingly. “Shhh,” he whispered into my hair as he continued to rub my back. I felt at home with someone other than my mother or Max, which had never happened in my life. “I don’t know why you're crying right now love but we can talk about it later, yeah? Mom cannot see you in tears or else we are never getting out of here.” I hadn’t even noticed I had started to cry but I simply nodded into his chest and pulled away quickly wiping my face off with the sleeves of the button up shirt. He was right, I didn’t know this woman but she was bat shit crazy if you asked me and I wasn’t going to deal with her at this exact moment. 

“So, what now?” I asked, not sure who I was directing the question at but looking at Louis hoping he would tell me, I knew we were family, it just felt right. The look he gave me told me that he didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news though, it told me that I wasn’t going to like that answer. I looked over at the woman claiming the be my mother waiting for an answer. 

“We go back to Doncaster of course!” She exclaimed clapping her hands and grinning over at Louis. “I’m so excited for you to see home, you must’ve missed it!” She exclaimed and I just looked at her in disbelief. “Oh my god, Mackenzie!”

I stopped her right there though, I was not going to let her think that this was okay. “My name in Alex…” I said through gritted teeth. I was mad before she came sure but she made it even worse. I just wanted to punch someone and she seemed like the easier target here out of the police officer, Louis or her. 

“No it’s not, I think I would know my daughters…” I turned and walked right up to her. 

“You are taking everything from me, my family and friends, my life and all I’ve ever known since I was apparently two. The bloody least you can do it call me Alexandra.” I said looking right into her eyes hoping she got the message. “And you might be my mother, but you are not my mom, I don’t know if this is some joke or not but my mom raised me my whole life, and that woman is not you. So no, I don’t think you would know my name at all. You know nothing about me but apparently the fact that I came from you and I was taken at two years old.” 

She began to tear up but I couldn’t get myself to care, I didn’t care about anything lately it seemed like. She quickly walked past me, whispered something to Louis and then swung out of the room as fast as she had came in. He gave me an apologetic look before sitting down on the bench and patting it, signalling me to sit. I did what I was told and we sat in complete silence for a few minutes.

After it got too much for Louis and he turned to face me, so I did the same. “Just ignore how emotional she is, she’s pregnant. It always horrible when she’s pregnant.” He laughed almost bitterly and shook his head. “Though I guess if my daughter wanted nothing to do with me I would be pretty upset too. You could cut her a bit of a break, I mean this is a lot for her to of through too. For all we knew you were dead buried somewhere unknown.” 

I looked at him trying to see what was going through his head. “Pregnant? Isn’t she too old for that?” I asked looking towards the door she just left out of. “And why get pregnant now after sixteen years of having one child?” I asked and he just laughed again. 

“Sorry to break it to you Alex, is it okay if I call you Alex? It just feels more natural,” he asked and I nodded giving him a small smile of appreciation that he wanted to call me something to do with Alexandra instead of Mackenzie. “But we have, well I have four other sisters who have gone through the same drama as I have since you’ve been gone, I guess they haven’t been through it for quite as long but Lottie is pretty close.” 

I looked at him with wide eyes, four sisters. I thought I was an only child my entire life but apparently I had a whole Brady Bunch of my own that I never knew about. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, and I was sure that I wouldn’t know for a while. “What are their names?” I asked wanting to know more about this mysterious family of mine.

“Well Lottie’s the oldest, she’s fourteen. Her real name is Charlotte but she hates it. Fizzie, short for Felicity, is eleven years old. Then there’s Pheobe and Daisy, they’re seven and twins.” He looked happy talking about them, he must love his family a lot. “They all have different fathers than us though, they share one and live with him half the time while we live permanently with mum.”

I nodded at his statement. “I feel like I’m in a freaking lifetime movie.” I laughed, still not believing what was happening to me. 

“Get used to it,” he nudged my side laughing along with me. “And can you just make me one promise?” He asked looking at me with a serious look in his eyes again.

“I don’t even know you,” I said looking at him. How did he expect to trust a girl he had just met? 

“You know me better than you think, it’s apparently a twin thing.”He laughed, it wasn’t as genuine as before though. “That’s why I’m here instead of ous father, well step father number two.” I laughed, it was nice to have someone who took away some of my problems. “But promise me to at least give London a chance, it’s absolute shit and you live somewhere nothing like it but I want to get to know you a lot more. If in two months you absolutely hate it I’ll help you get back here.”

I nodded, I at least owed him that. “So twins eh? I didn’t even think I had any siblings, let alone a goody two shoes male twin.”

He let out a loud laugh at that. “Goody two shoes my ass,” he laughed standing up and holding his hand out to me. “You don’t know me at all Alex,” I gave him a pointed look. I might not know him but he was the poster child that whole time we’ve been in this room except for the small amount of sarcasm that he used towards his mother. “Just wait until we get home, I was bribed to be a good boy here. Who can say no to a BMW convertible really?” He asked as I used his hand to help myself up. “Now sister, or Alex if you would rather that, lets get to the car before Johanna comes in here and pulls us out by out ears, or even worse assumes I’m helping you escape to you mother and takes my car away.” He gave me a horrified look and I couldn’t help but laugh again, it felt right.

“Who’s Johanna?” I asked as he slung his arm around my shoulder.

“Our mother, i thought you’d like something else to call here other than mum.” I nodded as we began walking out the door. 

***

I stepped through the front door of the house, or should I say mansion that I now lived in. It was huge looking from the outside and the foyer that was as big as my bedroom at home told me that it was not an illusion. I couldn’t help but gape at the size and the place. 

Getting to Doncaster took some work, they had to take me to my trailer which was now a crime scene to get some clothes and my passport so that I could actually get to London and then Yorkshire. I had never flown in my life but I had a passport because we occasionally drove down to the US from home. I guess I had flown I was just too young to remember any of it. 

“No my rooms in the basement,” Louis said from beside me as he started to drag me through the house. “You can either sleep down there or upstairs. Mom’s room is on this floor and the girls sleep upstairs so you may be alone up there a lot.” I looked into doors that were open and couldn’t help the excitement that hit me at the idea of exploring this place.

My whole life I had thought I would never even be able to make enough money to live but now I knew that my family was fucking loaded. And they were loaded in London, which didn’t seem like a common thing to do. 

Louis stopped and looked at me seriously. “Okay, I’m fucking tired so if you could please select where you would like to sleep I’ll give you a tour tomorrow.” I could sense his impatience and I didn’t blame him. 

“I would rather be closer to you for now.” I said hoping he was okay with that, he seemed almost happy as he nodded and motioned for me to follow him. We walked through the house until we got to a set of stairs that led down. 

“So here’s your room. You need anything my room is on the other side of the games room.” I nodded at him as he pointed at the door that led to the games room. “I’m in there most of the time if I’m not in my room. You need anything at all come get me.” I nodded again thinking he was done. “Do you want my number in case I’m not home for some reason?” He asked.

“I don’t have a phone…” I said, remembering that I wasn’t allowed to take anything with me but my camera. They said my laptop would be mailed to me after the police were done going through it.

“Right, well my cell is programmed into the house phone. You and I have a different line then everyone else so no one can listen in on your calls, so no need to worry.”

I threw my arms around him one more time. “Thank you,” I said not crying this time but smiling. “I hope you sleep well, sorry for all this.” I said before pulling away. 

“No need to be sorry.” He smiled moving away so that I could actually enter my room. “I’m actually glad we found you finally, I always felt like I was missing a part of myself and I never knew what.”

I sighed liking the fact that he felt the same emptiness that I had felt. “Well thank you still,” I said nodding at him. “You’ve been nothing but nice and welcoming while I’ve been a bit rude to everyone.”

“I knew that Canadians being nice thing was a hoax anyway,” he joked hugging me this time. “Good night Alex, I’ll see you in the morning for a tour of this place.” I nodded going into my room and flopping down. I was asleep within seconds of my head hitting the pillow.

**Louis**

I flopped down onto my bed right as my phone started to ring. I grabbed it off my bedside table to see Eleanor calling, but I ignored it. I loved her, I really did, but I was not in the mood for her questions right now. She was perfect, and her concern made sense. Who the fuck wouldn’t be freaked out right after figuring out your twin sister wasn’t dead? I sure as hell was, which was exactly why I didn’t answer. 

I sighed and turned so that I was looking at the picture on my bedside table. It was me and the girls when Pheobe and Daisy were only one years old. I was only 11 and had cut out Mackenzie, I mean Alex’s picture and glued it on because I wanted her back. Now I just didn’t know. 

My phone went off again. When I saw it was Liam I knew that I should answer, he wasn’t going to ask questions, he was probably going to tell me that the boys had fifa set up and ready to play if I was home. “Hello?” I said with the phone on speaker, my room was in the basement where Alex was now put too. There was two bathrooms, a kitchen, three bedrooms, and a games room. It was the boys and my cave, but now I had to share. I didn’t really care if she knew what Liam had to say though, he was our cousin, it was Niall you had to worry about. Especially if they had been drinking, he didn’t have a filter when he had been drinking and he had said some vulgar things to Eleanor according to her.

“Lou, you answered, you’re home!” I heard Liam exclaim with some whooping in the background, most likely Harry and Zayn, of course the bastard was on speaker. Why the hell was he in . Niall didn’t seem to be there. I laughed which was enough response for Liam apparently. “Come on over to Niall’s, he’s not home and we’re planning what prank to pull on him.” That’s what I needed right now, to just chill with my lads. I said yes and quickly hung up. I felt some remorse for not calling Eleanor back but it wasn’t enough to change my decision, I pulled on a jumper and ran out the door. 

I stopped by Alex’s door and quickly knocked. She didn’t answer so I assumed she was asleep, I wouldn’t blame her if she was. It had been a long day for me, and I didn’t have anything ripped out from under me, nor did I have to deal with the severe jet lag that she did. Thinking of having my twin back made me smile, but it also made me weary. I don’t know if I could handle if she was perfect like the other girls, I needed someone on my side in this family for once. I also don’t know what I would do if someone made her leave us again, I might kill them.

Running upstairs I thanked god that I saw Dan instead of my mom, he just wanted me to accept him as my new father and my mother would’ve made me take Alex with me, she wouldn’t listen if I told her that Alex was sleeping or that she needed to adjust to the new family before we started to throw my friends at her. I wanted her to stay, and if she met my friends her first day back she would be gone within a week and my mom wouldn’t understand that. “Hey Dan,” I said smiling at him. “I’m going out for a bit, yeah?” I paused for a second to make sure he was paying attention to me.

“Mhmm Louis,” he muttered back to me while reading the newspaper as I just continued walking and grabbing the keys to leave.

“Tell my mom I’ll be home late so don’t wait up!” I yelled approaching our front door. The poor bastard had no idea what he was getting himself into with this family. I loved my mum to bits, she was the number one woman in my life besides El, but she has never been quite the same since we lost Mackenzie. I made it down the street without running into my mother or her chasing me with Alex in tow, my plan to get out of the house working perfectly as I made my way towards Niall’s house in my car. 

The boys had to get a warning about my sister, I didn’t care who it was none of them could touch her. Dating in friend groups never worked out and if they ever broke her heart I wouldn’t want to have to break their face.


	3. Chapter 3

**Alex**

“And this is the games room,” Louis said after about an hour of walking around this so called house, which I was sure was more fit for the prime minister than a family like mine. It was absolutely hugmongeous; there was five bathrooms, ten bedrooms, two kitchens, at least 5 tv rooms, and an amazing living room which looked like no one ever went in there because the white couches and carpets had absolutely no dirt on them or stains, I was scared to touch anything when we went in there. 

There was more room than any family ever need in this house, you could probably fit 20 of my trailer into it if you tried, and you would still have some space left over. I could touch both sides of my ‘room’ in my trailer if I spread my arms out, I didn’t even need to stretch them. “My friends and I spend a lot of our time in here, obviously because it had the comfiest seats and biggest TV set. Do you play any video games?” Louis asked as I simply walked into the room unable to decided on what to examine first.

I shook my head no, we could barely afford my laptop for school which we bought secondhand off of e-bay, we didn’t have enough money to own internet or a TV even. I had always wanted to play an X-box or something like that but I never had the chance because all of my friends who had one told me girls couldn’t play with them because they were too violent and ‘I might get harmed’. 

“I lived in a one bedroom trailer and slept on the couch, we didn’t even have room for a TV in it.” The look on his face was full of pity, which just pissed me off. I didn’t expect to be moved to a family that had a ton of money but I didn’t want to be the outcast who everyone here felt bad for because I grew up kidnapped and less fortunate than them. “Max always had a TV, so I mean I watched it at his house but…”

“Hey,” he said grabbing my hand and pulling me towards a couch in the room, he could be bipolar at times. One minute he felt like he was so much better than me and then the next it’s almost like he is trying to comfort me. “We barely know each other…” I rolled my eyes, well obviously we didn’t know each other, he grew up across a fucking ocean from me. “Let’s play twenty questions!” He was so excited about his idea I couldn’t help but laugh at his enthusiasm. “What?” He pouted obviously upset I was laughing at him.

“Nothing, it’s just when guys at home ask you to play twenty questions it means they want in your pants.” The look of understanding that flashed across his face made me laugh even harder then before, he hadn’t expected that answer. “But I’ll play if you like, I trust that you won’t try to sleep with me.” I laughed trying to be a little less offensive, I needed him as a friend if not only an ally when I went to school and was thrown out into the world that in Doncaster, full of people who knew me but I had never heard of them before.

“I won’t, god.” He shook his head like I’d just told him I was sleeping with his best friend, whom I didn’t even know. “Anyway, are you single?” I gave him a look which caused him to laugh now, that was such a typical first question for 20 questions. “Okay okay, I’m just curious if I’ll have to beat a bloke up if he hurts you, I’m not trying to fuck you.”

“I am single,” I answered laughing harder, I was flattered that he was already planning on beating someone up for me though, Max never even offered to do that for me. “I had a guy at home that I liked but we were just best friends, you won’t have to worry about him though, he doesn’t want me in his life anymore anyway.” I stopped laughing instantly.

I looked at my hands thinking about Max for the first time today, which felt like a blow right to my gut. It still didn’t hurt in the way I had expected, I didn’t want to cry or break down because of everything that had happened. I simply felt indifferent at this point if anything at all, I didn’t want to punch someone anymore like I had but I didn’t want to smile about it either.

“What happened-“ I cut him off though.

“That’s not how this game works!” I laughed forgetting completely about Max and my troubles for a moment. “It’s my turn.” He pouted again but motioned for me to continue the game. “Are you single? I mean, I need to know who I have to choose bro before hoes with at school.” I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t want him to have some recent ex that I should avoid in order to keep the peace at the school.

He laughed but shook his head no. “I do have a girlfriend, Eleanor.” I wasn’t surprised, I feel like Louis was quite a catch at school. “You remind me a bit of her actually.” I nodded, hoping he would explain without me having to waste a question on asking him later. “You’re both quite reserved when you don’t know someone in the room but I feel like the real you comes out when you’re comfortable with someone like she does. She’s actually amazing in so many ways, I don’t deserve her at all so you won’t need to worry about defending me from her.” 

I nodded smiling at how obvious it was that he was in love, I was almost excited to meet her. It was cute to see the guy being the cute one for once, that rarely happened at home. The girls were always the mushy ones if anyone was mushy in the relationship. “So, what happened with the best friend from home?” He asked causing me to groan.

“Well,” I said looking at him. “He got a girlfriend like a year ago, and she was from the rich side of town and had everything that he ever needed or wanted and just one day he no longer needed me,” I looked right up to Louis but instead of seeing the pity I had expected I saw some anger in his expression. “Anyway, he doesn’t matter. I was kind of in love with him but he made his choice right?”

“No!” Louis said grabbing my hand. “He was an asshole obviously if he chose some girl over you. Trust me, you’ll meet some amazing people here.” I nodded, he seemed so sure while I was the exact opposite.”I’ll make sure that you are never treated wrong again, especially by your best friend.”

We sat in that room for more than twenty questions, but neither of us really noticed or cared at all. Before I knew it I was yawning and the room was almost pitch black, the only light coming in being the light from outside in the small windows that lined the room. “Guess it’s time for bed,” I said giving him a small smile to Louis. 

This talk was actually really good for me, I now had someone who wanted to know about me and my life, someone who cared about me without knowing me for years first. I know that Louis was different, Louis had thought he’s lost me for years and now I was back, but I still felt like he cared. I feel like he wanted to make me feel comfortable. I didn’t want to lose him again even though I don’t really remember having him in the first place.

***

One week I had been here in London. One week and I barely left the house, and I only really ever spoke to Louis which wasn’t even by choice. He was just the one I ended up running into around the house, no one else ever seemed to be around the same places I was at the same times. It also didn’t help that we had our own bathroom and kitchen downstairs so we really had no reason to leave the basement ever other than to leave the house or to go on the home computer which was in the study. 

There was only one rule for me at least, it was the worst rule ever though, I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere outside of this house alone until they caught my “mother” and it was guaranteed that I would be safe by myself. That made everything even worse, I was being treated more like a prisoner than when I was actually in jail. I could understand their worry but I was 18, I could handle myself. I had expected a lot more rules to be put into place when I got home so I guess I was being let off easy but it still kind of sucked. 

Louis told me our father wasn’t around, that he left with all of our money after I was taken and he was never seen again by Louis, which was Louis’ choice not his. I didn’t really blame Lou, I had no desire to find him myself after hearing that information, I never had a father in my life so why should I want one now. It caused one less thing in my life to be flipped upside down.

I looked at my bedside table to see the picture that Louis had given me, “I want you to have a reminder of me when you decide to leave us,” he had said. It was from when we were one year old and we both had chocolate cake all over our faces. We both had jean overalls on and goofy grins on our face. It made me happy to know that we were such good friends when we were babies, if I wasn’t going to be allowed to leave this place I at least wanted a friend. I didn’t have any to return to anyway if I left. I don’t know why he was so set I was leaving them after the two months were over, I wasn’t happy here but I would be worse off at home. I mean, I didn’t want to lose half of me again like I did last time and I would be completely alone at home, no family or friends to return to.

Jay had a new boyfriend since she divorced Mark; who was the girls father; three years ago. He is the man who got her pregnant, but I had yet to meet him. She didn’t want to push me too far by bringing him directly to me in my room, she thought I was going through a lot and was going to have a psychotic break of some sort. She couldn’t have been more wrong though, I was fine with handling all this. Having my life ripped out from under me apparently wasn’t a new experience for me, I didn’t need space and I wasn’t going to break down and go crazy. I wanted to meet him and see why Louis liked him so much. I also wanted to meet my sisters but they were in North America with their father for the summer.

I decided to finally get out of bed when I heard a knock on the door, it was 1 in the afternoon and I mean, I couldn’t sleep the day away again. I didn’t say anything as I got up because I figured it was Louis and he never entered unless I opened the door for him, and if it was my mother she would’ve spoken already to make her presence known. I walked over to the dresser that was full of clothes that I had bought the other day with Louis, who was a surprising nice shopping partner. There wasn’t a lot, I had never owned a lot of clothes and I really didn’t see the point in wasting money on clothes I would never wear. I grabbed the one shirt I hadn’t worn yet and ripped the shirt I had worn to bed off, throwing it somewhere in the room which was still too big to feel comfortable to me. My room had a lot of wasted space in it, which was good when I listened to music because I could dance but bad the rest of the time.

As I was throwing the shirt to discard it I heard my door open and someone say “See, she’s asleep, it’ll be fine.” It definitely wasn’t Louis’ voice, it had a very Irish accent to it which made me freeze where I was, who the hell was coming into my room? Should I yell for Louis or for someone? Should I get a weapon? His statement was quickly followed by “awwe shit, cunt, sorry! I thought you were sleeping” though as I stood there thinking over my approach to dealing with the intruder. 

I couldn’t help but stare at the boy who had just entered my room, I had forgotten I was in just a bra for a second when his eyes lit up for a split second from seeing my almost bare chest. He had blonde hair and extremely pale skin/ “I’m Niall by the way, sorry for this” he said as he threw his hands up to cover his eyes. I looked down and remembered what I was wearing, or more what I wasn’t wearing and I quickly pulled the shirt in my hands over my head.

I saw Louis poke his head it and grab Niall’s arm. “Sorry Alex, I was in the bathroom and he thought it was a good idea to come from the games room.” He gave me another apologetic look before finally pulling this Niall, who was obviously on of his friends, out of my room with what seemed like an excessive amount of force. I couldn’t help the look of confusion that made its way to my face, what had even just happened? 

I don’t know what it was but I’d never been too nervous to speak around any guy, I always stood my ground if they did something that I thought was wrong, even if I didn’t know them. Especially if they spoke to me first. I was never embarrassed about my body either, but I could feel a blush grazing my cheeks from being in my bra in front of this guy. I blame all the travelling and what was happening in my life for this situation I was in.

I walked back to my bed and flopped down groaning. Bloody great first impression too. He probably thought I was some mute or something. I didn’t know this guy but I really didn’t want Louis’ friends to think poorly of me after I just got back.

After a couple minutes of wallowing in self pity about was just happened I decided it was time I went upstairs and actually spoke to Jay anyway, she was my birth mother and I should probably have some sort of relationship with her if I was ever going to survive living here for the next year at least. I graduated once school started up again but I mean, I needed to figure out how the hell this school system worked too which I’m sure she could help me with since Louis was obviously busy with his friends. I groaned thinking about that encounter again before getting myself off of the bed and rushing past the games room avoiding the guys. 

**Niall**

I was slammed against the wall as soon as Louis had me back in the games room. “What the bloody hell was that Niall!” He yelled, well if he brought me back in here to make sure she couldn’t hear he was ruining that plan completely by raising his voice. Fucking idiot. “Why the hell would you do something like that?”

I was confused, hell was I confused, but I was always confused according to the guys. I didn’t know she was awake, Harry dared me to knock and I did. I thought it would be harmless to look in and see what she looked like seeing as Louis had her locked up in this house for the past week. “I’m sorry,” I said and he let go of my arms and taking a deep breath. When did Louis start becoming stronger than me? I was equal with him since I moved here last year, but I guess he’d been working out. Bloody hell, he was dating the hottest girl at our school exactly how he was, who the hell was he trying to impress now. “She quite nice on the eyes though, yeah?” I asked right before I felt a fist connect with my stomach. Okay, I deserved that one I thought as I clutched my stomach.

I fell to the ground coughing from the impact of the fist, he really had been working out a lot, bloody cunt. “Louis!” Liam yelled as I felt him begin to pull me up off of the ground. I was going to tell Liam he didn’t need to defend me but all my effort was going into breathing at the moment. 

“I would’ve done the exact same if he said that about Gemma,” Harry said still perched on the couch where he had fallen to laughing as Louis pulled me back into the room. I laughed which caused a bit more pain in my abdomen, but Harry wouldn’t do shit if any of us said that about Gemma.

“Shut up Harry,” Louis huffed trying to calm himself down but obviously bloody failing. This made me laugh harder, though I knew it was the wrong time to be laughing I just couldn’t help it. I always ended up laughing in awkward situations. 

“Nice hit Lou,” I said as I finally let Liam actually pull me up off the ground where I had been curled up trying to breath and not pass out from some sort of internal bleeding that he probably cuased. “Trying to be a better boxer than Liam over here or?” 

“Trying to get captain in our senior year more like it.” Liam said causing me to let out a little laugh at the fact that Louis’ shoulders became less tensed right when football was mentioned, bloody typical if you ask me. We were all on the team but Louis was by far the best out of all of us at football, I sucked ass if you ask me. “I’ve been taking him to the gym Ni, wanna join us next time?”

I scoffed at Liam’s offer. Me at the gym was a funny comparison, I refused to work out unless I had someone to impress. Maybe I should take him up on his offer, Louis’ sister was quite the looker and maybe I had a chance with her. Maybe not because Louis would definitely kill me if I went after her in that way. “I may never beat you guys on the field,” I began hoping to calm Louis down all the way and change the subject off of my weak ass. “But I can on the screen.” I said pointing at the TV.

This caused Louis to laugh. “Are you really challenging me to fifa boy?” He asked looking directly at me now with a glint of happiness in his eyes. That was a lot better then the anger that had been evident moments earlier. This one was much less of a look of death and much more a look of insanity, like he thought I was insane.

“You bet your balls I am!” I said jumping over the couch to grab the better controller before anyone else could get it.

“It’s on Horan,” he said grabbing the second best and setting the game up.

“Niall must’ve lost some of the air to his brain if he thinks he’s going to beat Lou,” Zayn laughed sitting down to watch our match. I had been practising but they didn’t need to know that right now.

***

“Hey Lou,” I heard a girls voice say as she entered the room I was trying to sleep in. I quickly sat up to look over the couch I was laying on to see who had wondered into the dark room, why the hell did we close the curtains? I noticed who she was right away, and couldn’t help but stare for a bit. She looked like she had been crying, or like she was about to. I knew she couldn’t see me in the darkness, which made me wonder why she thought Louis was in here just chilling in the dark, but I knew I had to say something.

As she began to turn around I took a chance and spoke. “He’s not in here,” I said which caused her to jump at the unfamiliar voice. Shit, I wasn’t helping her impression of me right now. I reached up beside me and turned the lamp on so that she could see me and I could fully see her, the brightness hurt my eyes at first but they adjusted. “Sorry to scare you,” I said my voice making it obvious I had just woken up, I cursed my vocal chords for giving me away so easily. I had been trying to take a nap while Louis and them went to football practice, I was skipping because I claimed I had a headache which Louis knew wasn’t true but we all knew I wasn’t of much importance to the team. 

“Ohh, sorry.” She said, obviously disheartened that she didn’t find her brother. “Did I wake you up?”

I laughed at her concern, she didn’t know me, why did she care if she had woken me up or not?. “Yeah, but no worries,” I chuckled looking at her eyes which were obviously red from some sort of sadness. She looked like something was eating her up inside, which broke my heart a little bit. “I’m Niall by the way.” I said hoping to make her stay a little longer. 

“Ahh, you’re the boy who wandered into my room.” She said. “Guess we’re even now.” She laughed about to turn around again. I wanted to do something for her, I didn’t know what but she just had so much shit happen to her that I felt the need to give her some happiness. I wanted her to feel like not everything was bad, that there was some good in the world.

“Wanna come in here and play a game or something?” I asked. “Louis’ at football right now, it’s tryouts and he wants captain so he may be there a while.” I explained. I saw her debating it which made my heart race a little bit, I had no idea why but her considering me as an option excited me. “I promise I don’t bite, and it may be nice to have a friend here.” I said hoping to make her reason with coming to hang out with me over sitting in her room alone possibly crying or worse.

“Playing a video game won’t make us friends,” she said but she still came and sat beside me on the couch. “But kicking your ass at it may show you what you have coming trying to be my friend.” I laughed at this, she was beautiful and full of sass much like her brother, I couldn’t believe they hadn’t been together their whole lives. “Now what game are we playing?” She asked giving me an innocent look.

I put on fifa as it was already in the game system and I could use some practice to help me become better than Louis and Liam. “This good?” I asked pointing to the loading screen and she shrugged looking slightly guilty. 

“I don’t know how to play,” she admitted and I nodded understanding the look of guilt now. I could really use this to my advantage with her, or I could just offer to change the game to one she knew how to play. 

I grabbed her waist and pulled her closer to me making my decision. “I’ll show you,” I said pulling her onto my lap. I saw a small blush go on her cheeks as our faces became level with each other and I smiled at how she was reacting to me. I’d never had a girl like me, and if she did I would score big time, she was gorgeous and seemed to be a good person as well. “Here, grab that remote right there.” I said pointed at the coffee table in front of us. 

“Okay,” she said slowly before leaning forwards and subconsciously grinding her ass into my crotch. I closed my eyes tightly praying that I didn’t get a boner right now, that would not end well for my chances with her or my chance of survival with Louis. I didn’t need anything else to happen that would scare her or make her weary of me “Now what?” she asked not even looking at me but at the remote that was now in her hands. 

“Now just follow my lead. I said wrapping my arms around her waist and grabbing her hands in mine. “Hold the remote like this. I’m going to control your hands for this okay?” I asked hoping she was okay with it, damn the more I had this girl on my lap the happier I was that Louis had finally found her. 

We sat like that for an hour before she finally told me that she thought she had it. I swear I’ve never laughed that much in my life then when she was learning how to work this bloody controller, and what I was known for at school was laughing so this was strange. She was quiet but she said so much at the same time, it was just usually under her breath or just from a look she gave you. Someone just needed to be listening to her, which I was happy to do for her anytime. 

God, what was happening to me? I sounded like a girl and I’d known this girl for the total of an hour, what the fuck was I turning into really? I needed to stop this right now, I needed to start having normal thoughts and I needed to move myself away from this girl. It was too bad that my brain said that but it didn’t quite get to my mouth before I said, “there’s a party tomorrow night,” like the twat I really was.

She laughed which made my heart flutter a bit. Shit, I needed to stop doing that, she needed to stop doing that, something needed to stop. “And what is that supposed to do for me?” She said moving off of my lap and onto the couch next to me so that she could actually look at me. 

I tried to shut my mouth but my brain once again was slower than my mouth. “You should come, you can meet everyone before you come to our school.” I cringed a bit waiting for her answer. I might not be able to leave her alone if she came, and what if she assumed is was a date? Oh my god, if she assumed is was a date Louis was going to murder me. 

“Umm, sure. Where is it?” She asked and before I could answer that question she piped up again. “And is there a theme for it?”

“It’s at my place,” I answered. The parties were always at my house this time of the year, I held an annual bash. “And it’s a stop light party. “ I shuddered at the though of her wearing green and having every guy all over her, I wanted her all to myself. Fuck Niall, get your head out of your ass man. “If I were you though I would wear yellow or red, unless you were already planning on wearing red?”

She laughed again, “is that your way of asking if I’m single?” She asked and i quickly shook my head no, shit she was going to start thinking things and I don’t know how Louis was going to handle them. “Well, I’ll wear yellow if you think it’ll make Louis more comfortable around your apparently rambunctious friends.” It was my turn to laugh, so Louis had warned her about us as well. Fucking brilliant if you ask me, I probably had no chance in hell getting her now considering the dirt he had on me. 

“So I’ll see you there when Louis comes?” I asked making sure to clarify that I wanted her to go with Louis and not with me. What was wrong with me? I was stuck between lovestruck white girl and complete duochebag when I spoke to her.

“Sure will!” She responded placing her legs over mine again. I nodded curtly regretting inviting her already slightly because I didn’t know what the repercussions would be just yet, and I’m not sure I wanted to figure them out.

“When I come where?” was asked from the doorway and I quickly stood up and moved away from Alex, which caused her to start falling off of the couch. Shit, smooth move asshole. Louis was stood in the doorway watching the scene in front of him. He didn’t seem mad, he almost seemed amused at what was happening. 

“The party tomorrow,” Alex said walking over to him to hug him. “Anyway, I’m going to go to bed. Thanks for tonight Niall, I’ll see you tomorrow.” As she left the room I gulped, this was not going to end well for me at all, Louis hated me with girls all because of some big misunderstanding. I was just going to dig myself deeper into a hole with this one, I could feel it.

“So you asked her to come to the party tomorrow night Ni?” I nodded hesitantly, this could either go really well or horribly. “Don’t you try anything with her Horan or I will have your head on a stake.” I nodded in understanding. Yep, Louis definitely wouldn’t react well if she started to think or feel things. I was screwed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Alex**

“Can I ask you about something?” I asked Eleanor. Knowing that I was going to the party and that I didn’t own anything that wasn’t jean, black, white, or grey Louis insisted I go shopping with her for something to wear. He didn’t say anythingabout what colour I should wear, he actually told Eleanor that I was single so green was the one that would normally happen at parties like this. I guess I was wrong thinking that him and Niall shared the same wavelength that I shouldn’t be socializing with the guys at this party. But why did Niall not want me to?

“Of course!” She said. We had been at the mall for almost two hours now and I still had nothing to wear, green just wasn’t my colour truthfully. Army green didn’t even look that good on me, Eleanor said it was because of my complexion with the fake blonde in my hair. I just think it was because I didn’t like the colour green at all. 

I liked El a lot though, she seemed to make Louis even happier when she was around him and like he said she was quiet and reserved which made her really easy to get along with. Once she was comfortable with me though she started telling me stories about Louis, embarrassing and cute. How he asked her to be his girlfriend is one that I hope is brought up at their wedding if there ever is one, and I didn’t care if I had to bring it up and let them finish the story. There is still so much I didn’t know about him.

“You know Niall right?” I ended up asking after wondering for a while how to start this conversation off. She nodded looking at me thoughtfully, this is what I was hoping for. I wanted her to wonder why I was asking but not ask me for an explanation as to why I was asking her anything.

I didn’t want to bring him up to Louis because he’s his friend and all but Eleanor would hopefully share some of the gossip and secrets about him. She seems like the type of girl who knew all of the gossip on everyone. “Can you tell me some about him?” I asked thinking I might just get his name and age from her, that’s not saying I was hoping for a lot more information out of her. She hopefully wouldn’t tell Louis I was asking either.

“Well, he’s not a veteran here in London like you’re not, he moved here a couple years ago but no one knows why he came. His parents didn’t come with him nor did his brother, who i think is named Greg and is like 6 years older then him. If you’ve met him I think you’ll notice he’s from Ireland originally, which the UK doesn’t get along with which I find funny that he would come here.” 

I nodded, I had definitely noticed that he was from somewhere other than Doncaster. I always thought that British accents were what did it for me but I could listen to him talk and laugh for hours, it was such a sweet sound. Oh my god, I never called someones voice or laugh sweet before, what was getting into me today? I must be PMSing or something like that. “He’s in your grade, so he’s graduating with you this year and he’s friends with Louis and them.” El said bringing me out of my thoughts again. “I don’t know how they became friends though, Niall’s always put more of himself into music than sports, which seems to be all Louis talks about anymore.” 

Music, interesting. Maybe he played guitar or piano, I always wanted to know someone who could play for me, maybe he writes music. I didn’t like jocks anyway, I guess I just had to deal with Louis being one and living with him at all hours of the day. Jocks at my old school were always pretentious and cocky, I didn’t want to deal with them if I didn’t have to. God I hoped Louis never ended up like that. 

“Niall lives in a condo across town, and there’s a beach right by it where he throws a party every year, which is where we’re going tonight.” On a beach, that was bound to be interesting I guess. “He’s not naturally blonde either, no one knows his real hair colour, he won’t tell us.” She said, well his roots were brown so I assume that’s his natural hair colour? Who dies their roots another colour to trick people? Was she being serious about not knowing?

This was more information than I thought she would tell me but I’m glad she did, I wanted to know more about him. I don’t think I needed to know about his home or his party but the curiosity I was feeling was strange. I couldn’t just let him go for some reason, I wanted to know everything about him. “Why so curious about him?” Eleanor asked the question that I hoped she wouldn’t.

I looked down before answering. “Well he invited me to this party,” I said kind of regretting thinking I was special for being invited by him after her telling me the part was at his house every year, but I wanted to believe I was special. He made me feel special while he was showing me how to play fifa, or more so showing me how to work the damn controller. He just wanted to make his friends sister feel welcome though, it was just being nice in his mind. “I was just wondering why he did that, but I guess he just wanted to help me have a friend other than Louis here in this hell that I’ve been thrown into.” Maybe hell was pushing it but I was kind of upset about feeling irrelevant to him now, my hopes of being important to someone new was crushed and I was bitter.

“Wait,” El said sitting up straighter than she had been before. “Niall invited you to his party personally?” I nodded and she instantly pulled her phone out of her purse. “What did he say exactly?” She asked me like I had just told her that Louis told me her was proposing to her and he had told me exactly how he was going it. I looked at her like she was crazy because she was acting absolutely mental right now. “This is important!” She responded while furiously texting away which only made her seem even crazier.

I laughed awkwardly at her interest in the situation right now, didn’t he just invite everyone ‘personally’? I mean it was his party after all, shouldn’t he be the one inviting others. “Well he told me there was a party, and then asked if I wanted to go.” She was typing while I spoke which made me wonder who she was talking to exactly, I prayed that if wasn’t Louis because I don’t think this was a date.

“Did he say anything to you about what colour to wear?” She asked looking at my face with a freaky serious look. Why did it matter what he told me to wear? Did she expect him to tell me to wear red so that I would forever be single at this school? Maybe I was off about him, maybe he wasn’t the perfect guy I hoped he was. She did know him a whole lot better than I knew him, I mean she had two years on me.

“Well, he told me I may be better off wearing red or yellow because his friends could get pretty freaky when drunk.” She nodded before going back to her phone with a slight smile on her lips. He didn’t say it like that exactly but a girl can infer what he meant. “Why is this so interesting exactly El? It’s his party, doesn’t he invite everyone?” I asked getting slightly more freaked out by her interest in the situation, which seemed to be growing with everything I told her about what had happened.

“I have something I want to tell you about Niall,” Eleanor said looking at me like she was about to tell me everything I ever needed to know about anything. “He is the guy at school that every girl wants to get to know, every girl wants to be the one to see what had tainted him in his life.” Tainted, he was a teenage boy not Edgar Allen Poe, what did she mean tainted? “He is also the guy that only speaks to his friends and their girlfriends,” she finished pointing at herself when she said girlfriends.

He spoke to me with no problem. Maybe it was because I was Louis’ sister, which would make sense. “Every year Niall tells Louis and Zayn, who I don’t think you know yet, what day the party will be and then leaves the guest list up to them. He never actually invites anyone but them and Liam who lives in Wolverhampton.” I nodded at her still completely confused as to why it was a big deal that he had asked me to go. 

“And now he wants all of the guys at the party to think that you’re either taken or not looking for someone, he wants you to seem unavailable!” She seemed really excited over something that to me seemed like it meant nothing, something that even seemed to be worrisome to me. I was also extremely curious as to why he only invited three guys to the party. I just stood there with a confused look on my face for a long while. “Nevermind! Come with me!” 

She pulled me back out into the store and started handing me piles of yellow clothing to try on, which I knew was not going to look good on me at all. “Guess I’m going with its complicated then.” I muttered under my breath which only made her seriously nod at me and push me back into the dressing room my arms restocked.

***

We had settled on a pale yellow flowy crop tank top and black high waisted shorts for the party. I was okay with that, it was cute and not too bright for me which a lot of the shirts she wanted me to try on were. She also decided that a new life should mean a new me and forced me to get a haircut. Little did I know that a haircut meant getting my hair dyed back to it’s natural colour and layered to look more girly. I liked my hair before she made me do anything to it, it felt more me like.

When Louis saw my hair when we got home he teased me endlessly saying I now looked more like him. He told me that I was going to turn every guy off because I looked too much like a boy. I simply rolled my eyes at him and walked into my own room. The hair didn’t look horrible, it just looked extremely different than when it was blonde.

Later when Louis saw me in yellow for the party he got a weird look on his face but I just shook my head at him and walked out the door, not even sure myself as to why I was wearing yellow. Eleanor said that I needed to wear something other than green so we could make Niall happy, which I didn’t even understand. Why did she care so much about what Niall thought and why did she care about what happened between Niall and I?

I had been on the beach for over an hour with Eleanor and her friend Sophia and I hadn’t seen Niall, or even Louis come to think of it, anywhere at the party. I didn’t know if that was a blessing or a curse at this point, maybe he was avoiding me because he didn’t like me and he had found someone who was prettier and better for him. 

I was intrigued by what Eleanor had told me but I was also a bit scared about the fact that maybe she was right and there was a reason he invited me here tonight. Did he find me special? Did he actually like me, and if he did why? Did he want to embarrass me in front of the entire school before I even had a chance to go to school? My mind was just coming up with so many reasons as to why I was here, some pretty dreadful and others pretty exciting. There was none that were in the in-between though.

I was pulled from my thoughts as a very drunk Louis stumbled over to us pulling Eleanor into a messy kiss. She pulled away giggling making me want to gag from how cute and disgusting it was. They were both so drunk, I looked at Sophia who had the same expression on her face. One of amazement and disgust. Both girls had graduated High school and were off to do something called their a-levels, I didn’t know what they were really. Eleanor had tried to explain it to me but it didn’t work at all.

“Alex,” Louis said throwing his arm around my shoulders and turning me to look where he had just come from. “There are some people I’d like you to meet!” He seemed really excited, which was probably because he was drunk, but I decided to be nice and meet them with a smile on my face. “This is Liam, Zayn, Harry, and Niall!” He said as four boys ran over. Great, Niall was one of them, it made me nervous all of a sudden.

“Liam’s our cousin” Louis slurred grabbing one of the boys with his other arm and almost hitting our heads together. “Ain’t you Liam?”

I laughed at how drunk he was, maybe he wasn’t a goody two shoes after all. “Hi,” Liam said smiling at me. “Louis’ a twat yeah? If you want a drive home so you don’t have to stay overnight I’ll drive you. I’m always the DD here.” I nodded, a cousin? I was not going to get used to having a family was I? 

“That might be nice, I don’t know how long I’m going to want to stay right now.” I was going to look at Liam’s reaction to make sure he was serious about taking me home but I got sidetracked by the look on Niall’s face, it was almost one of disappointment? Okay, if I was confused at the mall I was even more confused now. What was happening between the two of us?

“And these three!” Louis said lifting his hands off of my shoulder and moving over to them, “are my lads! They’re the best and worst people at our school!” I laughed, my eyes still on Niall. He was laughing too looking at the ground still, obviously avoiding looking at me at all possible costs.

“Fuck you Lou, you know we’re your favourite,” the one with curly hair laughed putting his hand out to me. “Harry,” he said with a wink. I feel like it made most girls swoon but I didn’t feel anything from it. He seemed like he was the guy who got any girl he wanted, and I had dealt with them enough in my life.

“Well hazza, I wouldn’t trust any of you not to break her heart.” Man this sounded like it was going to be bad. “Especially not you Liam!” Liam just rolled his eyes at me. Niall wasn’t reacting to most of this, his gaze still on the ground except for a couple quick looks in Louis’ direction as he spoke. “Anyway, I need more beer! Who’s with me!!” He said pulling the one I guessed to be Zayn away with him. 

Harry quickly followed them pulling Liam with him. I heard him mumble something about them having to make sure Louis didn’t do anything stupid which made Eleanor laugh shaking her head. She must really love him if she is okay with him acting like this all the time, I don’t think i would want to be dating a drunk Louis. 

I looked over at Niall again who happened to stay with us instead of following the guys to the beer station he had set up. “So,” he said looking down at his hands again. “Wanna come dance?” He asked looking at me for the first time tonight. “I mean, you don’t have to, I won’t be offended if you don’t want to, I just thought-” 

I cut him off suppressing a little laugh. How nervous he was was adorable to me, maybe Eleanor did have a point, maybe he did like me. “I’d love to come for a dance Niall,” I said smiling at him again. It made me happy that i made him as nervous as he made me confused, I felt like we were even now.

“Ohh, okay! Well I’ll be right back, I’m just going to grad a beer. You want anything?” I shook my head no before he ran off, I wasn’t drinking here. I probably wouldn’t drink for a while after what happen a week ago. I didn’t need to have a guy get me drunk and take advantage of me nor did I need to be arrested again.

“He so likes you!” Eleanor squealed when he was out of ear shot. I could feel a blush creeping up onto my cheeks but I tried to play it off as well as I could.. “Niall Horan has a crush on someone other than me! Louis will be so happy!” I didn’t laugh this time, he liked her? Maybe he was just using me to make her jealous. I wasn’t special, I was the rebound because he couldn’t get the girl he wanted.

This was all a game to Eleanor, that’s why she cared about our relationship so much. That’s why she wanted to know so much about what he said and what he did. She wanted to see if he was treating me any differently then any other girl, she wanted to see if I was her challenge. She had louis though, why did she care about who Niall had a crush on or who he talked to?

“Ready,” Niall asked coming over to me and holding his hand out. I nodded and let him pull me to the middle of the ground, I mean I guess we could both use each other as rebounds.

**Niall**

“I warn you I suck at dancing,” She said smiling shyly at me. Fuck chugging those beer was a mistake, I had a couple already tonight but I was trying to stay mostly sober for her. I didn’t want to drink too much so that I wouldn’t scare her away, but that plan went out the window when she actually agreed to dance with me. I couldn’t talk to girls sober with caused issues for me all the time.

“It’s okay, you may have heard us Irish lads know what we’re going but no, we don’t.” She laughed, I made her laugh and it made me feel like I was flying. I had never been this way with girls, especially not ones that were totally out of me league. I needed to rethink everything that was happening right now and how fast I was actually falling for this woman.

We got to a space within the crowd between songs and we stood there for a couple seconds just staring at each other before “Sexy Can I” blasted over the beach. Perfect, a god damn grinding song. I was not going to be able to handle myself is she started dancing on my like a lot of the girls did during these songs, fuck. 

As the song began she slowly began moving her hips to the beat, I bit my lip looking down at them. They swayed perfectly to the beat, she really had no idea how perfect she was. Without knowing what I was doing I grabbed her hips and pulled her closer to me so that we could move together. I needed her to dance with me, to dance on me even though that was the exact opposite of what I needed in reality. Nothing else mattered to me at this moment though, all common sense and rationality was out the window. 

Once our hips were connected it was her turn to bite her lip as she nervously looked up at me through her eyelashes. If I said that wasn’t one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen I would be lying to myself, it may even be the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. On instinct I leaned down and pulled that lip between my teeth and tugged lightly. I was going to ruin this, whatever the hell this was, but I couldn’t get myself to stop my actions.

It moment our lips connected she wrapped her arms around my neck continuing to grind her hips into mine. I groaned but it came out most like a growl, which made me pause for a second. She did the exact same thing with her hips a second time though making me kiss her even harder when I brought my lips back to hers. This is what kissing should feel like, this is what two people should be doing. 

I don’t know how long we danced like that, when we finally pulled apart a different song was playing, but fuck was it amazing. I just looked into her eyes for a few second before grabbing her hand and dragging her out of the crowd. I needed to get out of the heat before I got anymore of a boner but I also needed her with me. 

I could feel every girls eyes on us but I didn’t even care at the moment, and I cared about was her and calming myself the fuck down before I did something stupid like try to take her shirt or my shirt off. I just needed some air.

I got to the part of the beach where nobody really ever went during parties and fell down onto the sand. “Ohh man, I’m so sorry!” I said expecting her to hit me or leave, I was out of line kissing her and even more out of line dragging her to the middle of nowhere with me. Instead of hitting me though she just laughed and sat down beside me.

“Sorry for what? Walking in on me while I was changing, scaring the daylight out of me, inviting me here, avoiding me for the first while while, dancing with me, kissing me, or dragging me away from the crowd?” I laughed now, there was apparently a lot that I needed to apologize for. I didn’t think she was the type that would hold a grudge, especially not a whole list of grudges. I guess i was wrong.

“All of it,” I said sincerely. I didn’t regret any of it, I honestly didn’t but if she did I would apologize for it. “I promise not all of the guys here are like me.” I said, she deserved so much better than the random guy who walked in on her getting undressed.

“I hope not or else I may have some trouble,” she said. I stopped laughing and closed my eyes, for some reason I felt sick at her words, I felt extremely disappointed that I had messed things up with one of the only girls here that seemed somewhat decent and didn’t try to get into my pants within 5 minutes of meeting me. “If every guy was like you then your charm would be lost now wouldn’t it?” 

My eyes shot open, my charm? Did that mean that I hadn’t ruined anything? I didn’t have any game though, maybe she was mistaking me with Harry. “I mean,” she continued, “I’ve been at this party for what, two hours now, and you’re the only one to speak to me without the obligation to.”

“My charm?” I wiggled my eyebrows up at her now, she was sitting about as close as she could to my body that was lying on the beach. “Does that mean you’re falling in love with me already?” She laughed at this. “I mean, I’m not an easy guy, you could at least take me out to dinner or tea, and I mean. People who fall in love that fast kind of scare me.”

“Tea?” She asked laughing, “I didn’t know the Irish were as obsessed with tea as the British were, maybe I should abort mission if you’re one of them.” Of course that was what she got caught up on.

I gave her a confused look, “well I don’t like tea, but I mean most people may drink it with their meal at tea time.” Now she gave me a confused look and it clicked for me finally as to why she was caught up on that, she didn’t call it tea. “Tea is our evening meal here, the main meal of the day. What do you call it where you’re from love?” I saw her blush a bit at my use of the word love and it made me feel powerful. I would have to remember to call her pet names more often.

“Well, we call our main meal Dinner and our midday meal lunch, but I guess that’s dinner for you guys.” I nodded as she laughed. “I’m never going to get used to this,” she said which caused me to laugh again.

“It took me a while and Ireland is closer than Canada to here,” she gave me a look of desperation and flopped down so that her face was buried into my chest as she groaned. I instantly began playing with her hair, I would normally be hesitant but it felt so natural so I didn’t even care. “But you’re probably much smarter than me, and you now live with a bunch of brits which I didn’t when I got here.” She huffed and I expected her to sit back up but instead she just turned around so that she could look at me while remaining laid across my chest.

“Can I ask you a question?” She asked with a thoughtful look on her face. She was absolutely beautiful and I was amazed that she was laying here with me and it wasn’t just a dream. Shit, I barely knew this girl and I already liked her more than anything. How come I felt like I would give her the world and more if she asked? I had never fallen for a girl this fast before, not even Eleanor before Louis ripped her out from under me.

“Sure,” I said moving my hand back to her hair. It was extremely soft under my calloused fingers, I hadn’t played guitar in a while so the callouses were become better. I needed to start playing again but it hurt too much to play, I couldn’t handle it quite yet. 

“Why did you move from Ireland?” My whole body went rigid and I closed my eyes trying to keep the water behind the tear ducts and from running down my face like they usually did when this topic came up. I should’ve guessed that was her question, she was now friends with Eleanor and Sophia so they must have told her somethings as weird about me living here. She just wanted to know about me like them, she wanted to be the girl to see past the person I was here, the person I pretended to be. 

I know she sensed the different in my mood instantly as she slightly sat up, I could feel her examining my face for answers as to what happened. “You don’t need to tell me, I understand the feeling of people always wanting to know everything about your life, I mean I know Louis loves Eleanor but she is the nosiest person I’ve ever met.” I laughed becoming a bit less tense. Eleanor must have asked her a million questions while Louis was gone because Louis gave us strict orders to leave her alone about what was happening to her. Eleanor did like to know everything about everyone, she said it gives her peace in life. 

“You’ve definitely met the real Eleanor then,” I said risking opening my eyes and looking at her face again, she was giving me a small apologetic smile, that made me feel like an asshole. She was just asking out of curiosity, not out of alliterative motives which I was so quick to accuse her of having. “You don’t like talking about home either?” I asked hoping to change the subject to make things slightly less awkward.

“Well, no. I love talking about it” she sighed laying her head back down onto my chest. “I’ve just not found someone who is good enough to listen. Louis and my whole family gets anxious whenever it’s brought up, Eleanor would use it for gossip points I’m sure, and I don’t really know anyone else now.” 

I nodded looking down at her. “You can tell me about it if you’d like,” I said hoping that she would trust me enough to tell me. I really was an asshole, I didn’t trust her enough to talk about my life but here I was praying she trusted me. 

“Okay, well it was homey unlike the mansion we live in now, I lived in an extremely small trailer in Dartmouth,” as she went on about her mother, friends and life in general I felt like an even bigger asshole. She was willing to share her life story with me which had more bad in it then everyone in this town combined and I wouldn’t share mine with her because I was scared that she would leave me. I was scared of trusting again but she trusted me like nothing was wrong with the world when I was around, I was the one she wanted to listen to her over everyone else in the town.

“I don’t know if you understand, but I mean I just miss it like hell. All the friends I’d ever known were at home, and now I feel alone and scared to go to school and just scared in general.” I nodded knowing how she felt, it was exactly how I felt when I came to the high school here. I mean all of my friends were in Ireland or off to Scotland, none of them were here with me. I was also an Irish lad coming to live on my own in England, they hated us here.

She sighed signalling she was done talking, I could tell that she was a bit more content with what was running through her head. Before my brain could catch up to my mouth I let myself finally tell someone why I was originally here. “Music,” was all I said, but it was all I needed to say.

“What?” She asked, I didn’t give much explanation so I figured she was going to ask for more, before I could think about it I let her in more. 

“I came here from Ireland for my music,” I said. “My dad and mum always loved when I played and wrote music so they sent me out here to pursue a career in music.” At this point she was drawing mindless patterns onto my stomach which caused goosebumps to rise all over. It also made me more comfortable talking to her, it didn’t feel like I was telling her something important, it felt so much more casual. “So, music, that’s why I moved from Ireland. It wasn’t something tainting or traumatic like everyone here seems to think it was, I’m sure they’ll all laugh when they know now.” I sighed in the last part, I feel like now that I’ve admitted it to someone everyone was bound to figure out why I was here. 

“I won’t tell anyone,” she said drawing a heart onto my stomach, she kept getting lower with her hand which might end really badly for the both of us, well mostly me but,,. “I mean, if you really want someone to know it’s your job to tell them not mine,” I smiled at this. Maybe I would eventually be able to tell her the whole story, open up to her in the way that she had opened up to me, but at this moment she knew more about me than anyone. “Thanks for telling me though. You really didn’t have to, I don’t expect you to trust someone you just met.”

 

Fuck me, that’s right. I had known this girl for less than a week and I already trusted her more than Louis, who had known me for years now. This needed to stop and this needed to stop soon, except I don’t know if I could pull away emotionally or physically anymore.


	5. Chapter 5

**Alex**

_Your favourite Irish Man: What’re you doing today beautiful?_

I looked at the text for what felt like the millionth time this morning, it never failed to bring the same stupid girly smile to my face. It had been ten days since the party and I had only seen Niall once, though he texted me everyday to see how I was doing and remind me that he was alive apparently. His words when I asked him why he was texting me while he was driving home from dropping Liam off in Wolverhampton with Louis, not mine. 

There was two weeks until school started and Eleanor wanted me to go shopping with Sophia and her but maybe I could make other plans, maybe I could make more exciting plans I knew that I shouldn’t but I would see what he had in mind.

_Me:Nothing as of right now actually, why got some scandalous plans yourself? ;)_

I closed my eyes and hit send, I was such a bad person. I had always been shit at flirting but he never seemed to mind it, he said that it amused him when I was in a flirtatious mood, which had only been once before. He said that it made him more curious as to who I really was as a person, he wanted to know more about my personality. He also told me he was happy that I had no game because that meant he didn’t have to worry about being another “notch on my belt”, I would’ve hit him if he hadn’t said it over text, though it was funny. He didn’t have to worry about me going to anyone else or even getting someone else because my ability to get a guy to see me as something other than a friend is completely non existent.

_Your favourite Irish Man: Well, unless that counts as movies all day and staying off of my feet, than no. Nothing too scandalous planned today :) :)_

_Me: Just be lazy then??_

_Your favourite Irish Man: That, and I hurt my knee so I’ve been put on bed rest for a couple days. No real choice in the matter eh?? ;p_

I didn’t know whether it was okay to ask if he wanted company or if I was just supposed to assume that he was going to ask me. I had never been in this situation at all in my life and I really didn’t know how to handle it, I would usually just go right over to Max or Luke’s house without warning them.

_Your favourite Irish Man: If you wanted to come kiss it better I wouldn’t be opposed ;), or if you just wanted to come keep me some company that’d be cool too!_

My heart fluttered at this request, I don’t know if the first or second half made me more excited. I would have to ask Louis to pull some strings so that I could go alone, unless he was inviting everyone. Then maybe I wouldn’t want to even talk to Louis about it.

_Me: When would you want me to come over?_

I waited a couple minutes for him to respond, and I started to get really nervous. What if he didn’t actually like me? What if he thought we were just friends and he was just being friendly? If I was smart I would just use the hard to get method with him but I wasn’t smart, I wanted him to be my way of getting over Max. I wanted him to be the one who could reverse how hard I fell for Max, I wanted him to help me forget.

_Your favourite Irish Man: Well if it was my choice you would be here with me all the time, but I mean you have to have a life to princess ;). Could you get here in an hour? Or anytime that works for you really._

My heart fluttered once again at his text, I didn’t know what was happening to me but I really liked how special he made me feel daily. His texts and messages were always so sweet and thoughtful, and calling me princess was a plus side. I looked at the clock to see the time, it was 11:00a.m. meaning he wanted me over for 12 or so, I assume we’d be eating something there. “Louis!” I called walking out of my room towards his. Eleanor had been over the night before so I really didn’t want to go inside his room in case she was still there and the possibility that they were naked no longer became a possibility.

“What?” He said coming out of our shared bathroom with a towel just hanging off of his hips low. “Is there something you need?” He asked shaking his hair out slightly and looking behind him. Gross, this was not the image I wanted in my head…

“Well, yes.” I said hoping he wouldn’t say no, I really didn’t want to spend another afternoon with the gossip squad. Eleanor is not a bad person at all, I could see her being a good friend, I was just so used to be around guys that having girlfriends was a bit out of my comfort zone and I wanted to avoid it a bit longer. “Can you drive me somewhere at 12?” I asked giving him the most innocent smile I could muster, he didn’t know that I wanted it to be a date.

“Where, and whose going with you?” He asked me in all seriousness. I was hoping that he wouldn’t ask the second question but I guess he was going to worry just as much as my mother did, he was the one fighting for me to stay the most.  
“Niall’s house and no one, I was just going to go alone.” I said, I was expecting to see denial cross his face but instead it was just pure shock. Apparently Niall hadn’t invited any of the boys, or at least not Louis.

“Why are you going to Niall’s house alone?” He asked. I rolled my eyes at the accusation that was in his tone. Am I not allowed to have friends here or something? Can’t friends just hang out together?

“Well, Niall’s there…” I said and he nodded for me to continue. “And he invited me over,” my voice was dripping with sarcasm but he didn’t seem to care. Louis simply nodded and looked like he was thinking about something, I guess that annoyance was lost on him. “Can you take me or not?” I was getting slightly annoyed at his behaviour, it was making less and less sense as time went on.

“I can, I just need to go in and talk to Niall first, yeah?” I slowly nodded actually confused as to what caused his reaction. Why did he need to talk to Niall before? Was this seriously a plan that Louis had made to help me make friends? Did he put Niall up to talking to me. “Give me 20 minutes and we’ll go over, yeah?”

I nodded walking back to my room, Louis was a strange guy most of the time, but I guess he had to be my strange guy now.

I opened my laptop so that I could see if anyone from home had tried to contact me, though I doubted they had. I opened Facebook and saw a message from Luke, which made me smile. At least I knew his message was probably sincere. I ignored it for the moment, I wanted to see if Max had tried to contact me, against my better judgement may I add. I don’t know why but I thought it would hurt more if he didn’t, but when I opened Skype and saw 4 missed calls from him if upset me greatly. Why did he think he could just drop me like I didn’t matter and then try and contact me right after? I sighed reading the most recent message he had sent me.

“I’m so sorry for being an ass, I fucking suck as a best friend. I understand you probably don’t want to talk to me but I just want to know your safe.”

My heart fluttered slightly at this message, I knew I would forgive him one way or another so I might as well call him now. Sighing and closing my eyes I hit the video call button and waited for the ringing to finish. I don’t know why I dreaded this call so much, I loved Max, shouldn’t I be ecstatic that he wanted to be part of my life still? Why did I feel like calling him right now was a chore, not a blessing. Why was the person I was thinking of Niall right now?

***

“What?!?!” I asked laying with Niall, our legs tangled and his arm keeping me securely laying on his chest. It didn’t feel weird to me but natural instead. “Why is that so weird?” We had now gone through 3 movies, 2 pizzas, and one case of beer and he could not believe I had never seen a disney movie in my life.

I’d only ever seen like 10 movies before I came here anyway, so why would I have wasted my money on disney ones? I only started to watch them when I was fifteen years old. “Because! What kind of child were you?” He laughed which sent vibrations through all of me. I loved when he laughed even if it was at my expense, which it seemed to be today. I bit my tongue from saying something that could potentially make this situation awkward in the end and kept quiet instead. “We are watching one,” He said pushing me off of him and beginning to get up.

“Come on,” I whined which caused him to look at me with his eyes full of humour. “We’ve watched three movies already, can’t we do something else?” He shook his head slightly, I know I was whining but I was getting restless laying here with him.

“And what were you thinking of?” He said laying back down and pulling me towards him.

“Talking? I mean all I know about you is that you’re Irish, like music, and that you’re an extremely good kisser! I wanna know more. Like are you actually single? Favourite colour, animal, shape, number? How’d you hurt your knee? Why’d you invite me here instead of anyone else?”

“Well, yes, blue, liger, what kind of question even is that, 21, I was at tryouts and it’s been screwed up for a while so when I was tripped it screwed up again, and because you’re you, a random person wouldn’t have been good enough.” He answered while I laughed nodding. “My turn to ask you some questions?” I nodded again yawning so he just continued, I didn’t notice how tired I was but it was nearing 8 at night so I guess that made sense. “What’s your favourite guys name, and girls name? How many times have you been to the hospital for an injury and what were they? Who do you miss the most from home? And why did you end up coming here today?”

“And my questions were weird?” I laughed, “Well, Parker and Carter, they’re both unisex so I like that aspect. I’ve only ever been to the hospital once for an injury because I fell off of my friends trailer and broke my arm. It was hell because nobody signed my cast and it was broken at the same time as the most popular girl in school who broke her foot which was a cast that everyone signed. I miss Max or Luke the most probably, they were my best friends there and I feel almost lost without them being with me. And I ended up coming here today because watching movies with you sounded a hell of a lot more interesting than going shopping with Eleanor and Sophia all day long. Those girls are really nice but they gossip too much for my liking, this seemed much more chill.”

He laughed again. “Tell me about Max and Luke, what kind of guys were they?”

I didn’t feel like talking about them right now, hell when I was with Niall all I wanted to talk about was him, maybe I was just like every other girl at this school. I couldn’t be, I was nicer and actually cared about him. All they wanted was insight into his life. “I don’t know, there’s not much to say. They’re assholes but there was no one else who would even look at me because I wasn’t beautiful and popular. I was in love with Max but he betrayed me, and I guess we’re friends still but I don’t have much to say about him anymore. Luke was just the guy who never used or abused my trust.” I felt like I wanted to cry but I couldn’t let that happen. I needed to move past 

Max and that required getting Luke out of my life as well. “I don’t want to think about them right now though,” I said beginning to sit up.

I turned around so I was facing him and could easily change positions to a much better one than what we were in. “What do you want to do then?” He asked probably confused by my change in mood over talking to him and learning more about him.

“Well,” I said moving myself so that I was straddling his hips the best I could with one of his legs being bent at the knee. I made sure I was careful to miss his knee so that I wouldn’t injure him more. I saw him gulp at my movements which only gave me the adrenaline to continue with what I was doing and he straightened his bent knee out. “I might want to do something like this,” I said leaning down and kissing his jawline right where it met his neck, and then laying a light kiss on his nose. “Or maybe something more like this,” I said kissing his lips which he happily accepted while grinding my hips down onto him slightly. I didn’t even care about what was going to happen next I was just happy to get the reaction out of him that I was as he groaned and thrusted up into my grinding hips. Maybe I was moving too fast with him, and maybe I was pushing my limits too far but at the moment all I cared about was Niall and me and out movements being in sync.

I had never done this before with a guy and my adrenaline was running high as he detached his lips from mines and brought them to my neck and my chest the best he could being underneath me. I quickly sat up causing him to groan out in frustration, I could feel his hard on under my butt, my plan was to make it worse. I grabbed the hem of my shirt and threw it over my head onto his floor, he had seen this before so it wasn’t as bad. That’s what I told myself at least to make myself feel better.

Before I knew it I was being flipped over so that he was hovering over me. “Be careful…” I warned him.

“I swear to god the only words I want from those pretty little lips are consent, screw my knee right now.” I gasped a bit at the look in his eyes, it was not anger but amazement as he looked down at my bare chest. “Now may I please just?” I nodded as his hands hovered over my chest. “What did I say?”

“Yes,” I moaned as his hands finally made contact with my bra covered breasts. I felt like it was a completely new experience to me, I had gone farther than this with Max but it had never felt this good. Niall’s touch sent goosebumps over every part of my body and it felt like his hands were sending electricity into me. I felt truly alive in that moment.

**Niall**

Shit, shit, shit. Here was the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen laying below me asking me to touch her in such an intimate way and I was freezing up slightly now. I was waiting for marriage though, right? I made that promise to my dad and myself. That’s why I was hesitating, had to be. I wasn’t a wimp or gay or anything.

That pledge just meant sex right though? I could do all the other stuff? Having her grind up onto me and moan below me was going to be too much though, I wouldn’t be able to contain myself with that happening. I was not ready for anything yet, even though my fucking friend wanted more and he was making it painfully obvious, but what was the harm in some grinding? She couldn’t get pregnant from that right? It’s not like she would let me go farther than dry humping anyway, she didn’t seem like the type.

I quickly took my hands off of her seemingly perfect chest and ripped off my own shirt, I didn’t know anything about any of this so I was just going with it. I had one girlfriend in Ireland but she was the most Christian girl I’d ever met and we barely even kissed. This was new and kind of intimidating territory for me, not that I was complaining. Everything just felt so natural with Alex anyway.

“Holy shit, fucking hell,” I moaned as her hand started rubbing on my already hard crotch through my pants. My mind was slowly becoming more and more cloudy the more pressure she applied, I had to stop this before I… Awe yeah, keep that amount of pressure, fuck. I couldn’t stop myself from groaning and jutting my hips down into her hand as she continued to press and maintain a circular motion.

I placed my lips back onto hers instantly wanting to feel all of her under me, I didn’t want to miss a moment of this. Okay, I really needed to stop this, she was going to regret this and I didn’t want her to regret anything with me. I wanted her to trust me and not think I’m just trying to get with her, but when she moves her hips like that I can’t.

Who am I kidding? I was going to regret this too. I don’t know why or how I could ever regret doing something so perfect with someone so perfect but in the morning I would regret it. I was about to move my hand to move hers off my crotch when she started to play with the button of my shorts. Aw shit, no, fuck. This was getting too much.

I heard my front door open causing me to jump right off of her, who the hell was at my house? I hadn’t invited anyone over but her? “One moment,” I whispered to her about to turn around and grab some sort of weapon to ward off any intruders in my house. Little did I know that I needed the weapon for self defence.

“Alex?” I heard Louis’ voice yell into the house, well shit. “Niall? Oh come on, I figured the gimp couldn’t have travelled that far on his bum knee!” I quickly looked at my crotch which quite obviously had a boner, and then at Louis’ sister who was laying on my bed shirtless with her arm over her eyes, I couldn’t tell if it was disappointment or regret that put her into that position. This was not going to be a good thing for him to walk into.

“Well, babe, you’re brother is going to walk in any second….” Right as I started to warn her Louis walked in making me close my eyes hoping that he kept his cool.

I didn’t have to look at his face to know he was bloody mad, I knew I was a dead man the instant his sister took her shirt off, but I was too infatuated to tell her to stop. “Alex, please put your shirt on and meet me in the car.” He sounded pretty level headed, though he probably didn’t want to scare her. He was going to skin me alive the moment she left no doubt about that.

“Okay,” she said giving me an apologetic look and grabbing her shirt off of the floor. Fuck, if only I’d stopped this earlier and had enough willpower I wouldn’t be in this situation right now. “I’ll talk to you later Ni,” she said walking out of the door. I kept my eyes off of her in hopes that Louis wouldn’t get angered anymore, no need to feed the fire.

Fuck, I was literally screwed right now and not even in the good sense. “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT NIALL!” Yep, I was totally fucked. “Why must you mess with every girl that means anything to me?!?!”

I groaned, I knew that Eleanor would be brought up in this conversation, he just couldn’t let that go at all. “Okay, who said I was messing with her Lou?” He just glared at me so I decided to continue my defence. “Who said I fucking messed with Eleanor too? Did you ever hear my fucking side of the story? No, you haven’t so before coming up with conclusions as to my intentions with your sister!”

“

Niall,” he said trying to pretend to care but I knew that was fake, he didn’t care about me, none of them did. “I know you, I know what fucking happened with Eleanor, she told me what happened so don’t act like the victim there.” I rolled my eyes, it had been too long so trying to explain my side of the story so I don’t know why I was going to try now. I wanted to protect Eleanor then, I was too bloody blind to see that it was her ass or my ass on the line. Apparently to her I meant nothing but she meant a lot to me, so did Louis. “And I swear to god, if you don’t stay away from my sister so help me god…”

“What the fuck are you going to do to me Louis??” I yelled getting up into his face, I was not going to let him win this time. This group catered to Louis’ every want and need and I as so sick of it, he needed to grow up and learn the bloody world didn’t revolve around him the way Doncaster seemed to.

“Niall, I have the whole football and rugby team on my side.” I rolled my eyes, I had a whole crew from Ireland on my side, if they wanted a fight they would get a god damn fight.

“Okay Louis, how about we let her decide what the fuck she wants and you can leave my house right now.” I said opening the door for him to leave. I was done with this argument, neither of us would win and I wasn’t willing to fight until I had to surrender.


	6. Chapter 6

**Alex**

“What do you mean?” I asked looking at my computer screen in total shock. Believe me it was fitting after what Max just told me, I was not being overdramatic for once. I know I know, I was weak for talking to him, but I felt like I had to. I had skyped him everyday for the past four days but he was helping me talk through going to a new high school if that means anything towards my strength.

“We broke up, she told me that she met someone new.” I laughed at how calm he seemed about this, this is the same boy that told me three weeks ago that he was choosing her over me because he loved her. Now he seems so indifferent towards the whole situation, he really didn’t care about anyone did he? “She was bored of her bad boy phase and she met someone who is not in Stanford, what a bitch right? I mean bad boy phase? Who the hell goes through those, she doesn’t live in a movie.”

“Well, I guess you were sort of asking for it,” I said and I could see his shoulders tense even over webcam. I should have let him be offended, he had asked for it. Luke and I warned him on multiple occasions that she was just using him for her bad boy fix and that she would eventually find her real prince charming. “I mean, we all knew that none of us were going to get any of the preps from the right side of town. It’s not like we live in the Outsiders or anything but I mean. They have their lives and we have ours.” I knew he wouldn’t understand the reference, he seriously failed grade 10 like twice.

“Looks like yours turned out pretty good now, doesn’t it?” I scoffed, I know he was referring to my new life but it was far from perfect at the moment. I now had an overprotective family, a boy who hadn’t texted or called in over four days, my only friend was my brothers girlfriend, and I never even met my sisters yet because they didn’t want to come meet me while they were away. More than ever I just wanted the chaos of Dartmouth instead of this, and that was a feeling I rarely ever had. “I mean, you’re not starving to death like we are over here.” He laughed, of course the asshole would joke about that.

I sighed, “I might as well be. I’m being starved of adventure which might be worse.” I really didn’t want to talk about this whole transition thing with anyone, and especially not Max. Knowing him he would make me feel guilty for not wanting to be here right now. He would over exaggerate everything that’s going on over there and try to make me seem like the bad guy for being pulled out from under him right when he needed me most. Don’t get me wrong, Doncaster is still better than what I used to live like I was still adjusting though. “Anyway, how’s the boys doing? They surviving without the slut of the group?”

"Come on Al, you’re not going to hold that against me are you?” Bloody right I was going to hold that against him still, my heart might still flutter slightly when talking to him but he still was a complete jerk to me. “I’m sorry, I was mad and I didn’t let my brain catch up to my mouth. You’re only my slut if anyones, I miss you in every way possible.”

I had been talking to him for an hour already and I thought this would piss me off more than anything he has said already but it didn’t, it even turned me on a little. What was wrong with me? I needed to get my head out of the gutter with all of these guys.

“Can I please just see that pretty little chest of yours?” I knew I shouldn’t do this, I knew I shouldn’t be about to take my shirt off over Skype with Max, but I also knew this is what I had been wanting since I left him in Canada.

As I reached down to pull my shirt off there was a knock on my door. “One second!” I yelled before looking back at the computer screen. I cannot believe that I was brainwashed enough to do that over the computer. I really needed to get my head checked out or something. “Guess I should go, talk to you later?”

“Come on, they get you all the time! Give me some more Alex time!”

I laughed, he should not be the needy one out of us, he was the one who thought I was disposable wasn’t he? I was the one who needed him in my life, I was the weak needy one. “Sorry, I gotta go! You can fix whatever problem you might have come across on your own. Plus now maybe you’ll keep your promise to come visit me.”  
Before he could convince me otherwise I shut the computer screen and made her all my clothes were still in order. Max had only seen my stomach but I didn’t want anyone to know what could have just happened. If I couldn’t see Max I wouldn’t have to try and fight him off anyway, that was the good thing about skype. In person I couldn’t say no but when you can just shut him off it was a lot easier to stay level headed.

“Come in!” I yelled towards the doorway hoping whoever was at the door hadn’t just given up and left. Liam was here to stay with us until school started up and I wanted to get to know my so called cousin, so if it was him or Louis I didn’t want to miss a chance at bonding. If it was my mom I didn’t want to miss a good conversation opportunity. She’s calmed down extremely since I’ve gotten here and it turns out she gives awesome advice, maybe she could help me decipher what the hell was happening with Max and Niall right now because god knows I don’t understand what is happening what so ever. Niall has completely cut me off from contact since Louis walked in on us.

My hopes of bonding were fulfilled when Louis and Liam came hurdling into my room and tackling each other onto my bed. “Hey!” I said as the two of the landed on top of me while still play fighting, I was glad I was used to this behaviour because if I hadn’t been it would be bad. They were just being boys, but that doesn’t meant that they had to crush me with their combined body weight.

“Louis, god” Liam began to say pushing my brother off of him, Louis was obviously the lighted one out of the two of them. “I told you, just because we both got captain doesn’t mean we have to fight for dominance right now! That will happen when my team kicks your teams ass on the field at homecoming!” I would have thought this was a real fight if it weren’t for the obvious humour behind Liam’s argument. I mean he was outright laughing while saying it, which must mean he was joking, right?  
“Right, right you twat,” Louis stated sliding himself up so he was right next to me on the head board. He leaned his head on my shoulder before continuing, it was always interesting when Louis decided to visit me in my room. “Liam goes to St. Peters high school in Wolverhampton and thinks he’s the shit for going to some fancy boarding school.” Louis lifted his head off my shoulder, rolled his eyes, and then place it back exactly where it was before.

“Well, obviously it’s better then you’re high school, it’s in Doncaster!” What was wrong with Doncaster? I mean, our house was pretty dang nice wasn’t it? I didn’t want to see Liam’s house is this was considered bad to him.

“Hey! I lived there until I was eight so excuse me for wanting to stay with my friends there.” Louis looked at me again. If I wasn’t confused before I definitely was now, what does he mean he lived in Doncaster until he was eight? They told me that we live in Doncaster, didn’t they? “We don’t actually live in Doncaster, don’t know if anyone actually passed that message along to you. We live right outside the border of town, we live technically on Sheffield.” I nodded, great. That was good to know, considering I would’ve gotten in wrong on any paperwork or anything I needed to fill out. “So, sis. How’s life?” Of course he would change the subject just like that, he really was crazy.

“Pretty good,” I replied, which wasn’t exactly a lie. Liam moved himself to sit on the other side of me, I was not in a boy sandwich but at least they both smelled good for once. I really hope they didn’t start fighting again though, then I would definitely be squished by their combined body weight.  
“So, hows Niall?” Liam asked and I gave Louis a confused expression. Why was Liam asking about Niall? He probably spoke to him more recently than I had, and how did he even know that I was friends with Niall? Wait, Louis must’ve told him about the other day, well just great. They were probably going to use that as ammunition against me now.

“I don’t know, why?” That was the truth, I hadn’t spoken to him since I saw him last so I didn’t know how he was now. Then he seemed fine except for his knee.  
“Well I thought you two had a thing?” Liam looked extremely confused with was actually kind of adorable. He resembled a lost puppy with his eyes big and eyebrows knitted together. He was looking at Louis like Louis could tell him where to go.

“We hung out once and he hasn’t contacted me since.” When I said that Liam gave Louis a look that borderland disappointment, it was an instant change of facial expressions which was actually quite impressive.

Then they started to angrily mouthing something to each other, if I tried I probably could have read their lips but I was kind of scared about what they were yelling at each other about, it was obviously something to do with me. After about a minute of them fighting like this and looking totally ridiculous may I add they both gave me smiles that were extremely creepy. It felt like I was going to be murdered by them now. “Okay, well. You two are definitely weirder than I thought.” I stated looking in front of me.

“Sorry,” Liam said glaring at Louis one last time which caused Louis to hold his hands up in a way or surrender. “So are you liking it here so far? I mean it must be pretty awesome having me as a cousin.” He laughed. “Louis as a brother must suck though, I mean I could not live with this bloke 24/7.”  
I laughed, god this was going to be a long afternoon with these two, especially if they kept acting so strange towards each other. All they seemed to want to do was fight each other all the time but I guess boys are strange.

**Niall**

“Yes mom… mhmm… Why don’t you call him yourself?” Oh my god, no mom. I don’t talk to your other son more often than you do, I live in another country. I listened to her ramble about a bunch of stuff, I had been for the past two hours. I felt really bad, and I had nothing else to do but I just could get myself to listen.

“So how are you doing this week babe?”

I sighed, I knew she was going to bring this up, she always did. Two years ago at the end of this week the worst day of my life happened, I really didn’t want to relive it over the phone to my mom. I mean, I would relive it then, with tons of alcohol and swearing while I was alone in my room. “I’m perfectly fine mom, nothing to worry about here. I mean, I’ll just stay home, maybe have a couple of the lads over.” My mom thought they all knew, I had told nobody about the god awful day, yet I was close to wanting to tell Alex.

“Greg said he would fly up to spend the day with you,” great. Just what I fucking needed, my brother flying up here and seeing what a disappointment his little brother was becoming. Behind dad he always had the highest hopes for me in the future, he thought I would play my music for someone and become mega famous. He didn’t need to see I became a closed off, near alcoholic student with no love life or friends. That’s exactly why I stayed in the UK, I didn’t need everyone in Ireland to see what I’d become.

“No, tell him it’s okay.” She sighed obviously not buying that I was doing fine over here. “Mom, I’m old enough to handle myself. You don’t need to worry about me.”  
“When you’re older and both your babies have left the nest you can tell me not to worry Niall James Horan!” I laughed, of course she would use my full name. She did that whenever I was frustrating her, and then she usually changed the subject so that she had a chance to calm down. “So, got any girls in your life?”

Right on time, but not the topic I wanted to get into. Greg had asked me that last night while trying to avoid talking about this week with me. “Well, yes but no.” I had just told Greg no, but my mom wasn’t going to tease me endlessly and she could give me actual advice being a girl and all.

“Oh, tell me about her.” This is what I needed, my mom to know all the trouble I’m getting into here without her help.

“Well, she just moved here and she’s really nice and extremely cute but she doesn’t know it. She is rather quiet but the good kind, the kind that still tells you everything she wants you to know. She’s kind of way too good for me and it caught up to me,” I was an asshole, I was a total asshole. I had been so tempted to call her in the past few days, I had her contact open and a call within the click of a button but instead I wimped out because I didn’t want to start anything with Louis right before my senior year. “She’s Louis’ sister though, and you know what happened with his girlfriend. I’ve been asked and then told to stay away.” I laughed a bit, my mom hated Louis but he was my best friend besides Liam.

“What happened to the Horan in you? You used to be the spitting image of your father.” I stopped everything at the mention of him, it was too much right now. “When did you start letting some stupid high school boy walk all over you? The Niall in Ireland would take what he wants and chase her no matter who her family is.”

“Well mom,” I said, my mood having fallen quite a bit. “I am not in the mindset to be dating right now anyway. If I was then maybe I would go after her, Louis isn’t the only thing keeping me away right now.”

“Honey, are you positive you don’t want Greg or I to come visit for a day or two?” I shouldn’t have said anything about my mindset, all she did already was worry about me. Shit, I really didn’t want them to come up and see what a mess I had really became. I was in a bad place and I didn’t want to go back to Ireland. “You’re kind of scaring me.”

“No, mom. Trust me, I’m fine. I just need to focus on graduating and getting into a good school now. A girlfriend would only be a distraction.” Good cover Niall, she’ll buy that right up. Nice save from how crazy you’ve actually become.

“Okay honey,” I needed to end this call before she brought up anything else that might make me crack. “So, have you gotten your guitar fixed? Greg told me you said you might never write or sing again.” Shit shit shit, not music. She could have brought up anything but music and this fucking week but that’s all she wanted to talk about. I was so good at avoiding that bad in my life, why did it all have to be brought up in one damned phone conversation. “You know I love when you play guitar.”

“Sorry mom, I need to go. I’m late for a doctors appointment.” Lie, my appointment was in another 2 hours and she knew that. “I’ll call you later, I love you.” Before she could even respond I hung up the call. I didn’t even notice that I had been pacing my whole house during that whole house. Her talking about everything in my life that I had lost made me want to punch something, but I knew that I wouldn’t. I was such a wimp, I couldn’t even handle the idea of playing my guitar without wanting to cry. No wonder I was single, I was the least manly person in this town.

I sat on my bed and looked down at my phone again. I opened up the same conversation I did everyday and began to type.

_Hey, sorry I haven’t called or anything. I’ve been busy getting ready for school. How are you doing today beautiful?_

As I looked at it I had Louis’ voice in my head. I didn’t need to lose a friendship before we graduated, especially not over some girl. My heart really wanted to send the message, just so she knew I didn’t mean to blow her off like this, but my mind got the best of me. My asshole mind made me delete everything I had typed and fall back on my bed.

I don’t know why I was like this, so many people had it so much worse yet I was a baby about everything in my life.

Alex handled everything so well, she just smiled and laughed along with everything that was happening. She didn’t seem thrown off by anything that she was going through. God was she beautiful, I really didn’t deserve her.

I was just selfish because she made me forget. The couple times I was with her she helped me forget that anything was even crap in my life, she made me feel like I was flying. I didn’t deserve that though, why should I deserve happiness? I’ve done nothing good in my life that I should be praised about, I deserve to be punished.  
I drifted off to sleep with images of her laughing with Louis and smiling while Eleanor told her some stupid thing that happened in the girls bathroom last year. She could be happy about everything in her life even without me. Why was I so dependent on her right now? I barely knew this girl. I blame what this week is, I just want someone and she was a good target.


	7. Chapter 7

**Alex**

So, here I am. This is extremely intimidating, but what is the worst that can happen really? Other than starting my period in front of everyone and being known as bloody butt the rest of the semester. Or there’s the chance that I make absolutely no friends and am left to mooch off my brother for his friends who don’t like me either. Or I could have a teacher start to hate me for no reason whatsoever and fail one of my courses. Or maybe I could accidentally set the school on fire or trip someone so they get hurt and get myself completely expelled from the school before I even really start here. Really, nothing bad could happen at all right? I mean, I was bound to have an awesome start to my senior year.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before looking up at the school again, it didn’t make it seem any smaller though. I felt Louis’ breath on my neck before he leaned into my ear but I still managed to jump a foot in the air when he finally spoke. “You know the school isn’t a dog, it won’t cower away because you look at it with the right intimidation factor.” I laughed as he grabbed my hand and gave it a slight squeeze, probably to encourage me to move but it only really enhanced the nerves. I couldn’t let any of my family down now by screwing up my first day. “Now what do you say we go in and get you settled?”

I nodded and let him pull me farther towards the school. I didn’t want to go in, that meant I had to meet the principal and go to class and be the new girl who everyone knows about. I mean, really? Who hasn’t seen the news about me being saved from my horrible kidnapping to return home safe and sound. It was really a bullshit feel good story that I didn’t really want being put all over the news but did I get a say? No. They ran it everyday since I had got home, and this morning was bad. ‘Poor kidnapped girl set to start high school. Doncaster High is bound to give her a grand welcome!’ It’s just great really, not embarrassing or awkward at all.

“Do you know where the principal’s office is?” Louis asked and I groaned while he just laughed at me. “I’m kidding, I mean you could’ve memorized a map of the school in all that time you were trying to kick Liam’s ass at FIFA the last couple days but who am I to judge?” I really just wanted to hit him right now.

“Yeah you twat,” I laughed trying to play off not being nervous even though my heart felt like it was about to ram itself out of my chest. “At least I wasn’t just sleeping with my girlfriend as much as I could before school started.” He stopped laughing and did a little bow thing winking at me, good god. I didn’t know what him and

Eleanor were actually doing all the time but I guess my assumptions were correct. May I just say that knowing now make me want to vomit a tad bit more than assuming did. “Anyway, you going to show me where it is or not?”

“Well, I guess I could.” He said leaning closer to me again. “Or we can continue standing here in the lobby and I can keep watching you squirm under the nerves you’re feeling.” I hit him making him move farther from me again and turned to find my own way to the office, he really wasn’t helping the panic I was feeling right now. “Wrong way!” he called after me as I started walking towards a hallway so I turned to walk down the other hallway. I heard him come up behind me making me stop again and he chuckled. He grabbed my shoulders and turned to towards a door that was right in front of where we had just entered the building. “Love, the office is right here. I don’t know how Canada does it but at school here the office is right by the door.”

I rolled my eyes at him, ‘how Canada does it’. Every school does things differently, not every country. “I knew that, I was just testing you.” Okay, I didn’t know that but he didn’t need to know that I didn’t. Well, he probably saw right through me, but still. He was being nice and pretending that he didn’t notice.

“Well, I think I passed.” I rolled my eyes again at his matter of fact tone. It was almost freaky how much he reminded me of myself sometimes, being a twin is weird. Even though we didn’t grow up together we still shared so many traits with each other. “So, do you think you can handle the big scary principal on your own or do you need me in there to hold your hand?” I wanted to hit him but the bigger part of me wanted him in there with me, I don’t think I could do it alone. What if the principal hates me? What if because I’m not from England he’s going to put me off as trailer trash and think I’m a trouble maker? What if he sees that I’m Louis’ sister and then expects a lot more from me than I can give? Oh my god, I couldn’t do this… “If you want me to come because I know him I will in all seriousness.”

“No, I’ll be fine,” I gulped. I was going to go into a panic attack if I thought about going in there alone anymore, but I really didn’t want Louis to see me as weak or vunerable. He didn’t need to be worrying about me all day.

It was all catching up to me finally though, my life was never going back to normal. I was never going to go to school with my friends anymore, I was never going to feel comfortable with all of my teachers. I was forever going to be known here as the girl who was kidnapped and thought to be dead until August this year. I was forever going to be known as the freak who doesn’t know who she is, and I was never going to be able to outrun my past as long as I stayed here where it was the biggest new story.

“You don’t look fine,” Louis said grabbing my arms in a way to stable me, I hadn’t even noticed I had been swaying back and forth until he did that. His voice sounded really concerned about something but I had no idea why or what. “Alex,” he said in the exact same tone when I didn’t respond. “Do you have panic attacks ever?” He asked in an even more concerned tone, what was wrong right now?

It was only then I realized I was hyperventilating, and badly. If I didn’t get more air in I was going to pass out. “I don’t usually have any, it’s only happened a couple times before.” That was kind of true… Okay, that was a total lie. I had medication when I was a kid because anytime I was put into a situation where I had no sense of comfort I would go into a panic attack. I stopped taking it in high school though. I didn’t feel the need to have my mother with me at all times anymore and by that point I had my group of friends and I knew the teachers well enough, I had a couple who knew me well.

Thinking about the last thing to cause a panic attack for me made me start to shake even more and it was a lot harder to breath than a second ago, I know that tears were the next thing to come but I didn’t want to think about that right now. I needed to try to calm myself down but the more I thought about what was happening that worse everything got. I felt like the walls were starting to cave in on me.

“Okay, well lets get you into the office and sitting down.” Louis said is a cautious and calmer voice now. I nodded, he had a good point. I didn’t want to be in public shaking and crying like a crazy person, nor did I want to faint in the main lobby of my new high school. He ushered me through the door and sat me down in the first chair he saw. “Focus on breathing okay, I’ll be right back.” He was being weirdly good with this. I gave him a small nod and put my head into my hands, that’s when I felt the tears begin to pour down my face. I lifted my head after a minute when my breathing was evened out slightly. Louis was gone to who I assume is the secretary telling her something, probably getting my schedule or asking what to do with me right now. He spoke like he knew her well, I guess he was in the office a lot.  
I watched as he gave her one of his best smiles and turn back to me with something in both of his hands. He smiled when he saw me again but it was much more genuine than the one he gave the secretary.

“You’re colours coming back, I guess you won’t faint.” I laughed and closed my eyes. Calming down was a good idea, and focusing on Louis was how I did it I guess. My breathing was still erratic but I could get air in now. “So, I just told Brenda that you were feeling a bit overwhelmed and needed a minute before we go see Mr. Spelling.” He said putting a glass of water in my hand and placing something cold on the back of my neck.

“Brenda?” I asked, that must be the secretary. It’s hilarious that he knows her on a first name basis but I shouldn’t be laughing right now. I was really curious as to how he knew exactly what to do but I didn’t want to ask. Maybe Brenda had suggested that he give me water and something cold, he had been talking to her for a little while.

“Yes, Brenda.” He said answering my previous question. “She’s our football coaches wife so she comes to all of our games. All the players know her quite well.” Ahh, he must be a coaches pet, he’s probably a teachers pet too knowing how much of a momma’s boy he is. “So do you think you’re ready to go in now?”

I nodded. I had no idea what had gotten into me, I mean I was overwhelmed and everything but I was sure the panic attack part of my life was gone. Apparently I was wrong about that. I may need to look into that medication again, get some until I’m adjusted to the new school and life that I now have.

I got up and followed Louis down a short hallway. There were awards lining the walls, our principal must be known for being good, because they seem to have won principal of the year at least four times and have two masters degrees. Those are some pretty intense qualifications considering what Liam told me about this school.

“Hey Mr. Spelling,” Louis said as we walked into the office finally. He walked right in without even knocking, definitely a teachers pet. “Nice seeing you again. How’s your daughter doing? She planning on playing again next summer?”

“Ahh Louis!” The man I assumed was the principal responded. “What do I owe this great pleasure? And she told me only if you’re her coach, she took quite a liking to you. What does she say? The hot good boy who coaches me some days.” He laughed whole heartedly. “You have quite the influence on those seven year olds for a volunteer coach.”

Louis laughed. “Ahhh yes, Daisy and Pheobe get jealous at times when she is paying attention to me.” I laughed a bit in disbelief, he coached football too? “They say it’s gross watching their friends being happier with me because I’m male. Anyway, we’re here to introduce you to your wonderful new student, Alex. She’s my sister I was telling you about earlier this week when my mom and me came in for a meeting.”

A meeting? And they spoke about me? Well I didn’t know about that, shouldn’t I have been there if I was a major topic? “Hello sir,” I said waving slightly at him after I noticed he was looking over at me. “Alex Tomlinson, nice to meet you.” I said holding my hand out to him to shake. That’s what you to do to be respectful right?

“Ahhh, you’re the Canadian one?” He said laughing slightly and shaking my hand in return. I internally sighed in relief, I guess it was the right thing to do in this situation. “I guess it’s true how polite you all are?”

“I guess so,” I said with a nervous smile. I knew that was a stereotype for Canadian’s but I didn’t really see it. Like if you ever go to Toronto they are are vulgar, or at least a lot of them were to me when I went with me fake mother. I was also eight and all they really did was swear at me and honk their horns a lot.

“So I assume you got your schedule from our wonderful secretary, and you have the star football player to show you around.” I laughed looking over at Louis who had a proud smile on his face. “You need anything at all come see me okay?” I nodded, too scared to speak and say the wrong thing again. “We want to make your time here as wonderful as possible, especially since everything will be so new in your senior year.”

“Thank you sir,” I said when Louis nudged me a bit. Was that all he wanted? I expected a much scarier and longer meeting than that. I felt even sillier now about having a panic attack, I really had nothing to worry about.

“If that’s all you can leave, don’t be afraid to make yourself known though.” The principal told me smiling. “God knows your brother makes himself known.”

“Thank you,” I said laughing a bit before following Louis out of the office. He was a lot nicer and funnier than my old principal.

“So, you have Eleanor or I in all of your classes except for the first one. I don’t know any of the boys schedules so I can’t really tell you if you’re in any of their classes too. Do you want me to come with you to it in case none of them are in it? I can get excused from my first class so that you don’t have to be alone,” Louis asked. He was probably concerned by my panic attack earlier but I really would be fine, hopefully.

“No, I’ll be fine. Could you tell me how to get there though?” I didn’t know my way around this school yet and I really didn’t want to get lost on my first day.  
“Of course, it’s right down that hall, room 213. The rooms are numbered so it’s hard to miss.” He said pointing down the first hallway i tried to walk down today. I guess I was right about needing to go down there eventually.

“Thanks, I’ll text you if I need you.” I said, I probably would need him at some point but I wouldn’t text him unless it was an emergency.

“And I’ll be there in a second.” He smiled and kissed my cheek. English people had a much more touchy view on families than we did at home but I was glad he showed some affection before we parted ways. I guess it was time to get to calculus, alone for the first time since I had arrived here. This was going to be weird, I just prayed that I didn’t have another anxiety attack before the day was over.

**Niall**

“Ha ha ha Stan,” I said as he remained doubled over in laughter. What I said wasn’t even funny but he thought it was. Maybe it was because he just got home from his grandmothers at midnight, and the time difference is insane. “How was the trip though bro? I mean, all the rest of the lads and I had a boring summer.”

“I missed hanging out with you guys like hell!” He said, Stan was Louis’ childhood best friend and probably my favourite in that group of guys right now, only because I hadn’t seen him all summer. “My grandmother is deaf so I just shouted a lot hoping that she would hear me.”

I laughed, Stan hated his grandmother but his mom caught him with all of our alcohol hidden in his room so she sent him away for the summer to ‘straighten him out’. If only my parents were doing that for me but sadly they weren’t.

The door of the classroom opened and I assumed it was the teacher. I looked up to see what poor person got Stan and I in their class and that’s when I saw her. Damn she was just as beautiful as last time I saw her, last time I was touching her, maybe even prettier. She had he hair down framing her model like face. He blue eyes popped perfectly with her red lips making her look like an amazing foreign exchange student. He outfit was perfect as well, I just wanted to pull her into me and kiss her all over.

“Dude, who is that?” Stan asked and I felt a tinge of possessiveness come over me.

“That’s Lou’s sister,” I know Stan had heard about her and he would never want to upset Louis unlike me.

“She’s too pretty.” I held back hitting him or growling, she wasn’t mine. I was an asshole and didn’t talk to her for nearly a two weeks, I had no claim over her because of that. I could’ve had a claim on her, she could’ve been mine but I was stupid and scared.

She was scanning the room, probably to see if Harry or Zayn were in this class, and her eyes caught mine. We stared into each others eyes for a long while, I wanted to just walk up and apologize to her. I could see some hurt in her eyes and it killed me to think that I caused that in her right now. I was the first to break eye contact and I quickly looked at my hands. “Woah dude, you and Louis’ sister just had some serious eye sex. Have you even met her before?”

That was it, I needed to talk to her. I got up quickly and walked over to her where she stood. “Hey gorgeous,” I said and she just rolled her eyes at me. “Want to come sit with Stan and I love?” I really fucked up and I could tell that. She completely ignored me and sat down on the other side of the classroom from where my bag was. I should never have ignored her, it was a stupid thing to do. I ruined virtually every chance I ever had with her.

“Turned down!” Stan yelled as I sat back down next to him. I groaned and laid my head down on my desk praying that this slight pain in my chest would leave any minute. These next couple days were going to be harder than I thought they were going to be.

**Alex**

I should’ve been focusing during calculus, and then history after but I couldn’t. I couldn’t get that jerk off my mind. His beautiful voice calling me gorgeous and asking me to sit with him. He knee shaking smile being directed towards me as he hoped I would forgive him.

He didn’t even apologize, he didn’t contact me for almost two weeks after I thought we had a pretty intense connection. And then he has the nerve to call me gorgeous and ask me to sit with him. I couldn’t believe him right now.

“What’s on your mind?” Eleanor asked sitting next to me at our lunch table. I looked over to where Louis sat down a bit across from me, he was too enthralled with one of his friends though so I decided to talk to her.

“I assume Louis told you about walking in on Niall and me.” She nodded guiltily so I continued. I hadn’t expected Louis to keep it from her, she is his girlfriend. It’s a bit embarrassing though having her know how far I was going with Niall after pretty much just meeting him. “Well after that he didn’t text or call me and then that asshole had the nerve to try and talk to me today in class.” I looked to where Niall was sitting at our table and I saw him laughing at something Harry was saying and butterflies rose in my stomach. That made me even angrier, how the hell did he still have an effect on me? He was just a rebound but apparently my heart didn’t want to think that anymore.

“Well, maybe he’s been busy.” She seemed nervous but I pushed it aside.

“Yeah,” I said almost feeling guilty for giving him the cold shoulder, emphasis on the almost. “But I don’t know, Louis was in there talking to Niall for like 20 minutes after I left, maybe Niall figured out he didn’t want to mess with his best friends sister.” There is a large possibility that that is true, I mean who wants to mess with their friends siblings really?

“So I hear you had a panic attack today?” Eleanor changed the subject. It was worryingly fast to change the subject, but getting my mind off of Niall even for a little while might be nice. I can’t spend my lunch shooting daggers into him with my eyes now can I?

“Yeah, Louis dealt with it though,” I replied. She probably knew that, that’s definitely why she knew I had an attack. Stop stating the obvious Alex. “I don’t know how he knew what to do though, he handled everything really well.”

“I have social anxiety, quite bad actually,” I didn’t believe her at first. Eleanor who was extremely quiet when we met but took me to the mall within a day of knowing me. She never came off as anxious or anything close to it. “I have them a lot, more so when we started dating but I still have them when we’re in crowds and stuff. So he’s learned the early signs and symptoms and what to do to make sure they don’t get worse.” I nodded, she must be getting a lot better with them. I wonder what has been helping her? “He didn’t expect yours though, it scared him pretty bad. He called me in a panic himself when he left you unsure how to deal with things. You say you don’t have them often?”

I don’t think I could lie to her, I didn’t realize how upset it made Louis. I really didn’t want to worry him in the first place but maybe lying to him made him worry more. “I lied about that actually, I had them a lot when I was younger.” I admitted to her. “I had a lot of separation anxiety and social anxiety. I was on medication for it until I went to high school, I told him they didn’t happen often because I thought it would worry him less, but obviously I was wrong on that front.”

“No, you were right.” What? I was right to lie and worry him? “If he knew that you struggled with it before he’s going to worry more. You don’t know Louis that well and I can understand that but he cares about you more than anything in the world.”

“Really?” I asked, I mean I knew he cared but I didn’t think it was that much. He always seemed more interested with his friends or Eleanor than with me. Liam bonded a lot more with me since I’ve gotten back than Louis has. “That surprises me.”

“He cried the day after you were back. He got drunk with his friends your first night here, called me to pick him up, and cried for two hours.” My eyes went wide, why would he cry? That would make me feel like he didn’t want me here, not that he was happy I was here. “They were happy tears, he had told me about you on our second date. ‘My twin was taken when we were younger’ he said. ‘I miss her everyday, I feel like part of me in missing all the time and I just want to feel complete again’. That’s part of the reason I fell for him, he was so vulnerable when he spoke of you. And then when you came back he didn’t know how to feel at first. He felt full again, he felt as though for the first time since he was a child that he didn’t have to feel afraid that he would never be truly happy again.” I looked to where Louis had been laughing before, now his eyes were on Eleanor and I. He gave me a small smile and wave. I smiled warmly in return, I was learning a lot about him as we went, he was actually one of the best people. He whispered something to who he was talking to and started to come over to where we were sat talking about him.

“Speaking of the devil,” Eleanor laughed as he leaned down and kissed her.

“You telling her all my deep dark secrets or something?” He laughed, he couldn’t be more right about that.

“Of course not, what kind of girlfriend would I be if I did that?” I joined them in the laughter, it was contagious if you were around it enough. “I need to go get my lunch anyway, if you’d like my seat boo bear.”

“Tell her that nickname why don’t you,” he groaned as she got up. “When you get back I can just be your seat anyway,” he winked at her and it was my turn to groan. I had a new outlook on Louis now but I still didn’t want to see their flirting.

“Sure sure you idiot,” she laughed leaving me alone with Louis. He looked at his hands for a little while before actually saying anything.

“So, Boobear?” I said hoping to spark some sort of conversation. He was never this nervous around anyone, I don’t know what was happening.

“Yeah,” he laughed shaking his head. “You actually started that nickname when we were younger. You hated my name and would hug me whenever you were hurt. And when I say hug I mean get me into a death grip so mom started calling me your boobear, and it stuck. Then she had to go tell Eleanor about it.” I laughed, he was really my safety blanket I guess. He still kind of was I guess.

“Well sorry about that,” I laughed smiling at him. “Guess I was kind of a nuisance even when I wasn’t taken.”

“Don’t apologize, I missed your death grips. Not almost breaking my ribs daily was a horrific event.” I closed my eyes, he really knew a lot more about my childhood than even I did. “Plus if you weren’t such a nuisance we wouldn’t have missed you this much the past few years.”

“That may have been better.” He stopped laughing now, things were getting more serious which wasn’t what I planned to happen in the middle of the cafeteria. “You could’ve had a normal life instead of one centred around your dead twin sister.”

He took and deep, shaky breath before changing the subject. I guess he wanted to wait until we were in private to have this conversation too. “Sorry I wasn’t in History today,” He decided on starting with. I had noticed that when I walked into the class. I was only supposed to have calculus alone apparently but neither Eleanor or him showed up to my class I thought maybe he was wrong about Eleanor’s schedule. “I had to handle something for football, I’ll be there every other day though.” I nodded laughing a bit, why did he feel bad about it? It’s not like I’ve never been to a high school before.

“So Eleanor told me she has anxiety,” maybe changing the subject again would make him a bit more comfortable. I was right, he relaxed right away at the mention of Eleanor, which was refreshing. It was a serious conversation too but not too serious for other people to overhear or see.

I think Eleanor was slightly wrong about who was most important to Louis though. I think she had me beat any day truthfully when it came to him. She was what calmed him down, even without being there. He really was in love and it hurt my heart a bit knowing I was probably never going to end up in a relationship like theirs.

“Yeah, I asked her to talk to you because she can relate, I hope you don’t mind.” He said smiling over at me. He was so hesitant when it came to me and I don’t know if I found it cute or if I was concerned about it.

“I don’t mind at all,” I said smiling over at him in hopes of making him less hesitant. I was happy that he wanted to come over and have a conversation with me though, maybe he was happy I was home like Eleanor said. Today wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be either, the only thing that was going wrong was Niall.

I looked back over at where he was sitting with Harry and Zayn at the other end of the lunch table. He was no longer laughing along with them though, he was staring right at me. I couldn’t quite read his expression. It was almost one of regret or longing. I quickly looked back at Louis, I didn’t need to get involved with anyone else who didn’t care about me.


	8. Chapter 8

**Niall**

I grabbed my beer, it was only my 7th but I could feel the effects perfectly. I punched my bed, fuck today. Fuck fate. Fuck my life. Fuck every mistake that I’ve ever fucking made that brought me to this point in my life. I don’t know how hell could be worse than living right now, I was living in hell. I just kept punching the pillow with tears streaming down my face. I hated everything right now, I just wanted to be dead myself.

I grabbed my pillow and screamed into it, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Two fucking years and my reaction was only getting worse. I was angrier every year, and more thoughts invaded my head the longer it was. Why did I drink today? It was so ironic, but when theirs doctor told me two years ago it was the only way to numb the pain. Now I should be avoiding it like it’s the plague. But instead here I am piss drunk screaming into a god damn pillow.

I stormed over to my closet and swung the door open. I was going to end up breaking something but I didn’t even care what kind of mess I made anymore. My life was already a mess so why not ruin everything in it. I threw my clothes everywhere looking for what was hidden behind them. Looking for the last thing I had of him.

**Alex**

“Really?” I asked Liam over the computer. He skyped me to discuss my first couple days at school, claiming that he wanted to make sure I did fine but I think he just wanted to brag about his first days at school. He was telling me about how when he watched someone be pants in his cafeteria a couple days ago, which was hilarious. He also apparently saved someone from choking, joined cross country as well as football, and he’s already planning about being valedictorian. He had his senior year more planned out than I had my life and it made me concerned. “I can’t believe you got so much action and excitement this week, it seems like everyone at my school just likes to point and whisper at me.” It was true, that’s all people seemed to be able to do.

He laughed at me for that comment, he had warned me that that was what it would be life but I had tried to shrug it off. It was almost impossible to do though. “Well, I mean all the freshmen girls do that to me for a different reason.” Of course he would go there, use the ‘dreamboat’ card where every girl wants in his pants. “They all drool whenever I walk by, but I’m sure you see that with your brother. It’s really an inconvenience.” He sighed like he was actually put out by all of these girls. I just rolled my eyes.

“Ohh yeah, except it’s Eleanor with Louis and I’m pretty sure she struggles to keep her clothes on.” Liam started laughing even harder at this. It was the complete truth though, half of the time they were the ultimate cute couple and the other half of the time they look like their going to film a porn right then. “Her friend has a huge crush on you you know?”

He had a look of panic cross his face for a second. What the heck? Why would that panic him, literally a minute ago he was bragging about all the girls that drool over him. He was obviously thinking before he asked me “Sophia?” I nodded looking down at the homework I was trying to work on while talking to him, which was a completely useless plan. “Should you be telling me that?”

I giggled a bit, yes I giggled. Living here was really changing me. “Maybe not, I don’t know girl code.” I thought for a second, Sophia might not like that I told him now that I think about it. “I never told you okay?”

“Yeah, sure thing love.” He just shook his head. “I didn’t think she even really knew of my existance, I’ve had a slight crush on her forever but never had the guts to make a move. Hm, maybe I’ll have to talk to her next time I’m down.”

“She nearly faints whenever you’re near you idiot.” I said. My phone dinged and I looked down at him.

1 new message from your favourite Irish Lad

I opened it to see what it was quickly knowing that I was probably going to ignore it, he didn’t deserve my attention right now or ever really. He wasn’t allowed to decide when I was important and when I wasn’t, I wasn’t just a toy that he could toss aside.

_Alex, I know you hate me and you have every reason to but I’m so drunk right now and I need someone to help me. Please come over?_

I chose to ignore the text right when I read the word drunk and someone to help me. He was drunk and lonely and only wanted someone to fool around with and I didn’t want to deal with it right now. I thought that he might’ve been different than the guys at my old school but he was just like all of them, it made me physically sick to think that I let him effect me in any way at any point since I got here. Max treated me with more respect than he did.

I rolled my eyes at Liam signalling that the message was nothing but spam. “Phone company?” Liam asked me with an eyebrow raised. He didn’t believe the message didn’t mean anything, and I don’t blame him. I even knew that my mood changed instantly while reading it.

“Something like that,” I said but both of us knew was a lie. I quickly left the conversation so I wouldn’t have to look at any of the cute texts he had sent me when I opened it back up. I don’t know why I didn’t just delete the conversation. I put my phone down on top of my homework which was obviously going to stay undone. “Just someone stupid from back home, no one important.” Once again I’m pretty sure we both knew we were lying, but Liam didn’t call me out on it. That’s one of the reasons I liked him so much.

As I was about to change the subject my phone dinged again.

_Please don’t tell anyone I texted you, shit. I’m so sorry, you don’t need to come. I’m an asshole, I can’t do this to you. i’m sorry, fuck._

When I first read the message it pissed me off even more, he didn’t want anyone to know he was texting me. That little cunt, he was too embarrassed to even speak to me when others knew about it. As I read over it again I realized that it was a little better than the last one. “Sorry,” I said to Liam as I read over the text one more time feeling even better about how he chose to admit he was an asshole.

I smiled back at Liam while putting my phone away again. He still wasn’t getting a response out of me, he didn’t deserve one. Just because he admitted that he was an asshole didn’t mean that I was going to forgive him for being one. Right when I put my phone down it started to ring though.  
“I’ll let you go deal with that, obviously your friend really needs you right now. I have homework to get to anyway. Skype next week?” Liam said and I gave him a thankful smile, I really didn’t want him to hear whatever was going to happen in this phone call, I didn’t even want to hear what was going to happen.

“Yes!” I responded answering the phone without putting it up to my ear, I just wanted the ringing to stop. “Talk to you then.” I hung up the computer and put my phone to my ear finally scared as to what would be happening at the other end. “Hello?” I asked expecting Niall to be moaning or panting on the other end but that is not what I got at all.

“Alex?” It was Niall, but he seemed like he had been crying for a while, not turned on. “I’m so sorry for being such a screw up, you deserve so much better.” His voice was definitely hoarse, but not the good kind of hoarse. Why had he been crying? A drunk lonely guy probably wouldn’t be crying, would they? “I’m just scared and I hate myself and I don’t want to be alone and you were the first one I thought to call and I screwed up Alex. I’ve screwed up so bad and I don’t know how to fix it and…”

I cut him off, he was making no sense. “Are you at your house Niall?” I asked, I might hate him right now but he was really scaring me. His mind set was obviously not his normal carefree self and I didn’t want to know what he was going to do.

“Yes, please don’t tell Louis. Oh my god, Louis… He’s going to kill me for calling you…” What did Louis have to do with his lack of calling me, and why would he kill him for calling me? “Oh my god, I’m such a fuck up. I can’t even do this whole being an asshole thing right.” I heard a sob escape Niall on the other end of the phone, which made me hold my bitter laugh back. I think he was being an asshole beautifully right now.

“Hey, I’ll be there in fifteen okay?” I said hoping he didn’t do anything stupid in that time. “Just please stop drinking…” I don’t know why I was going over, or why I even cared. It’s not like Niall had shown any signs of caring about me in the last week.

“Don’t tell Louis please…” He begged his breath shaky. “Louis thinks I’m back in Ireland and… Why did I fuck everything up for myself? I’ve disappointed him, I’ve gone and disappointed him!” I heard a something being thrown on the other side of the phone and I prayed it was something soft. Why was Niall so hysterical about telling Louis a little white lie?

“You didn’t disappoint… Louis…” He hung up the phone before I could finish my sentence so I was left with a beeping which was worse than him telling me off. I needed to get to his house and fast, before his drunk self did something stupid. How was I going to convince Louis to give me the car though? I had no friends and Eleanor was here… Eleanor! Perfect!

_Hey El, I really need the car for an emerge so can you help me with convincing Lou to give it to me?_

I sent the message grabbing my coat off the back of my desk chair and walking towards my bedroom door. I needed to breath, I couldn’t get into a panic attack over this of all things. Niall should be irrelevant, it’s not even like I really know him at all. I made my was down the hall towards Louis’ room hoping that he didn’t see the text before Eleanor, I’m sure they do that whole happy relationship lets share everything shit. Luckily my phone dinged not even a minute later while I was still walking down the hallway with her response.

Of course! That’s what friends are for, I want details later though.  
She probably wouldn’t be getting those but I could at least make something up for her helping me out. I knocked on the door before entering giving Louis some warning in case he was naked or anything. He was the exact opposite though, he had sweat pants and a giant sweater on. He also had his glasses on which made me laugh a bit, he hated them but he must be doing laundry which apparently irritates his contacts. “Hey Lou, I need the car for tonight. One of the girls is in a crisis and called me.”

He quickly looked at Eleanor, shit. Why did I use one of the girls? Obviously he was going to look to her to see what was up, I can only pray that she helps me out with this one like she said she would. “El, do you need to head over too?”

“No,” Eleanor said giving me a reassuring smile. “Alana’s parents are separating like I told you before and her dad is threatening to take her to Canada, she wanted your sister to tell her about it to calm her down a bit. The rest of us are kind of useless so she only wanted Alex to go. You know Alana, she’s a bit coockoo.”

“Ahh, you sure you don’t want me to drive you over?” I knew he was gong to ask this the moment I started lying. Luckily I actually thought of a response to this question.

I quickly shook my head, being careful not to seem so against the idea even though that would be the worst possible idea. “No, I don’t know how long we’ll be and you know, I don’t want you to have to worry about when to pick me up and such.” Good job Alex!

He nodded and threw the keys to me. “Just text me if plans change or you’re staying the night or anything so that we know.” I nodded heading out his door and taking the stairs two at a time. I had no idea how to get to Niall’s house but our car had a gps and I had his address on my phone so I would get there somehow. I quickly got on the road, praying I didn’t get in an accident because they drove on the wrong side of the road here, I mean it’s called the right for a reason.

It was dark out, the clock read 10:30pm. No wonder Louis was wondering where I was going so late, it’s a wonder he didn’t ask more questions. While skyping Liam I didn’t even notice the time, it didn’t feel like any had passed at all but apparently we had spoken for over 3 hours. It worried me more that Niall would call me so late at night, what had he been doing the rest of the day?

I couldn’t stop thinking about what was wrong with Niall as I drove down the highway. What had he done that scared him so much about Louis? And what did Louis have to do with him not calling me the past few days? Why had he been crying so much?

I got to his house and ran up to the front door right when I put the car into park. I know I should hate him and it shouldn't worry me but I couldn’t help it. I hate to admit it but I did like him a bit, it’s not love or anything but he was special. He had made me feel special.

My heart was racing as I pulled his door open and saw the mess in his front room. His shoes were thrown everywhere and one of his pictures were smashed on the floor. “Niall?” I called walking through the door. “Niall, I’m here!” There was no response

Maybe I should call Louis, the closer I got to Niall’s bedroom the more damage that had been done to his house. What if Niall was dangerous right now, he did throw something while on the phone. I slowly made my way closer to the bedroom almost hoping that Niall had fallen asleep on me and that I could just tuck him in and leave knowing that he was okay. I couldn’t help my mind from going to the possibility that he had somehow hurt himself though.

I approached the door and tried to open it but it was locked, that wasn’t a good sign. I lightly knocked, if he was asleep I didn’t want to wake him up at all but I also wanted him to respond. “Niall,” I called lightly. If he didn’t respond I would leave, I would let him sleep but text him to call me when he woke up and was a little less drunk than he was right now.

“Alex?” He called and I heard some rustling in the room. I should’ve run already, I should’ve told Louis that I was worried about Niall and left so that the boys could deal with this, they knew him better than I did anyway. I was in too deep now though, there was no turning back. He came and opened the door for me but he didn’t look dangerous, he just looked extremely lost. His blue eyes were now red and extremely puffy and his face was tear stained from what looked like a lot of crying. He looked like a lost little boy and my heart broke for him.

“Niall, what’s wrong?” I asked hesitantly stepping into his room which was a disaster zone right now. Everything seemed to be thrown everywhere or broke except for one thing which laid on the bed unharmed, his guitar. I surveyed the damage he had done to everything but nothing seemed too broken, just a couple broken frames and an exploded pillow. The rest was just things thrown around.

“Everything, my head is telling me all these things and I know it’s just because of today and the alcohol but I’m starting to believe them and I don’t know what to do…” He fell to the ground and started to pull at his hair with his eyes squeezed shut. My heart broke for the Irish man in front of me. I surveyed the room again to try and estimate what he had consumed alcohol wise. There was a lot of empty cans smashed on the floor, I was scared to know the actual number that he drank today though.

“Okay, can we start from the beginning Niall? What is today?” I sat down beside him and placed my hand on his knee in hopes of calming him down if even only a little bit. “Why is today so bad for you.” I didn’t know if I actually wanted an answer but I didn’t know how else I could help him really.

He shook his head a bit and looked over at me. “You can’t tell anyone okay? No one knows what happened, no one knows… No one knows…” I nodded, he was concerning me though. What was wrong with him? “It’s my fault really. If only I was in the car, If he didn’t have to pick me up it wouldn’t have happened, nothing would’ve happened to him…”

“To who Niall?” I know I needed to let him tell me on his own time but I also needed to know who caused this much pain in him. “Would’ve happened to who?”

“My dad…” He said still shaking. “Two years ago, I had an audition with a music producer here. My dad decided he was going to drive himself from the airport because he flew himself in from Ireland to support me.” I might be crazy but I could almost feel him calming down as he relieved himself from all of his thoughts. He was almost going into a trance but it was definitely better than the state he was in a moment ago. “It was late at night because I didn’t want the lads to know about it.”

I squeezed his knee in reassurance, I wanted him to remember I was here for him right now, even if I was still mad at him. How hard this was for him actually broke my heart regardless. “A drunk driver came out of nowhere, hit his car head on. I got a call from the hospital but by the time I got there is was too late…”

“Oh my god,” was all I could say. I knew he probably didn’t want me to pity him, I didn’t want anyone pitying me now and my situation wasn’t nearly as bad in my opinion.

“It was two years ago today. And now I’ve been such an asshole to you and to your brother and everyone and he would just be so disappointed in me…” Niall was crying again at this point, I quickly pulled him into a hug and he didn’t fight it. This was an extremely different Niall than I’ve seen in the few times we hung out, even when he confided in me about his music. I didn’t know how to deal with it, he was so broken, he was like a five year old that lost their parent in a busy store two hours ago.

It was silent for a few second and I thought maybe he had stopped crying for now. His breathing was evening out a bit, I couldn’t tell if all of these emotions were completely raw or if the alcohol was affecting him more. “I’m sorry I was such an asshole, you don’t deserve it but I actually really like you but Louis just freaked me out so much and I thought you deserved better and I’m such a screw up Alex, I mess up everything I touch.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, could anyone really know how to respond to that? “Niall,” I started but I was still unsure how to finish. I just looked ahead waiting for something to happen, something that would make this easier to deal with.

“Are you sure you’re drunk?” I said after about 10 minutes of just sitting there hoping to lighten the mood. He was making tangible sentences and he wasn’t slurring most of his words so he didn’t seem to be that drunk anymore. Maybe it was just a chain reaction now?

“I haven’t had a sip in 2 hours so god knows anymore.” He didn’t laugh though, he just put his head in his hands again and groaned. 2 hours wasn’t enough for most of the alcohol to leave his system but I was happy to hear he had laid off the booze.

I looked over at the clock on his bedtime table, he had called me quite late at night so I figured it must be even later now. 12:00pm it read, man my time is really screwed up. I didn’t notice that I had been here so long, it didn’t seem like any time had passed at all. It never did while I was with Niall. “Lets get you to bed,” I said helping him up and praying that he wouldn’t argue with me.

“I don’t know what to do with myself and I’m scared Alex. I kept having these thoughts about how much better the world would be without me and I’m scared that their true.” Alex, say something. Help him. Why wasn’t I able to make him feel better? What was so wrong with me that I stay silent every time he talks like that?

“Sleep it off, you’ll feel better after you sleep it off.” I said, that wasn’t very reassuring. He seemed to think it was a good response though. He stumbled over to his bed and held his guitar out to me.

“Can you please put this away safely?” I nodded grabbing the guitar from him. “Be careful with it, it’s the one thing I’ve never ruined.” My heart broke a little for him and his broken dreams. It made sense now why he had given up music at the moment.

He laid down and I placed the guitar in the stand I saw in the corner. I walked back over to him in his bed. I unbuttoned his pants hoping that he wouldn’t take it the wrong way, and luckily he didn’t, he just lifter his hips allowing me to pull the down his legs. I then pulled the blanket up and tucked him in. “Goodnight Niall,” I said beginning to turn away.

“Stay?” Niall mumbled under his breath. I turned around thinking I heard his wrong, maybe he said thanks or something along those lines.

“What?” I asked scared that he didn’t say stay.

“Please don’e leave me tonight… I don’t want to be alone.” He said a little louder. “I know I’m an asshole but can we pretend I didn’t fuck everything up? Even if only for one night?” I liked the idea of that.

“Okay Niall.” I said kissing his forehead and going to pick up his room a bit. If I was going to be here all night I might as well make myself useful.

**Niall**

“Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you text? I don’t understand why you tell me all of this stuff and then treat me like I’m a nobody.” It was the next morning and my head was pounding, why did I choose to drink so much? Bloody hell. I wasn’t focusing on my head though, I was focusing on the beautiful girl who was laying on my bed fully clothed right now. She hadn’t left, I thought she would’ve left for sure.

“Louis told me to leave you alone.” It was the truth, and she deserved the truth. She didn’t deserve some bullshit answer that made me seem like an even bigger tool. “He didn’t want to see you hurt and I didn’t want to cause drama in my group of friends or between you two. You have to understand Louis and I have some drama in our past, mostly including Eleanor, and he was digging it back up.”

“What?” She asked, of course she wasn’t going to believe me. She would take her brothers side just like everyone else did. My chest hurt almost as much as my head. Even after I had given so much of my trust to her she was going to break it like everyone else. “So you wanted to please Louis so you pushed me to the side like I wasn’t relevant?”

“No, it wasn’t like that. I still talked about you every day to my mom and brother. I wanted to call you but I stopped myself everytime. You blowing me off at school was the worst thing that could’ve happened and it made everything become even worse yesterday. Knowing that I was hurting you and there was no way to fix it.” That was the truth, I spoke about her every single day. Whether it was telling Greg how beautiful she looked in her outfit or giving my mom an update about what was happening here. Man I must sound like a stalker now, we had hung out twice and she already had me telling my brother that I wanted her as mine and only mine. She was definitely going to leave now.

“You should’ve tried” she said looking down at her hands. Hell yeah I should’ve tried. I should’ve told Louis to go fuck himself and hung out with her everyday that I could. Instead I was a cunt and left her in the dust thinking that it would be best for both of us in the end. Man was I wrong about that.

“I wanted to.” I said finally. “Believe me I wanted to but I didn’t believe you would want me to. I knew you were far too good for me and I didn’t want you to have to settle. I didn’t want someone as beautiful and innocent as you have to deal with all of my shit.”

“That didn’t work out very well not did it?” She had a valid point, I still managed to drag her into all of the shit going on in my life.

“Can we start over?” I asked hoping that her answer would be of course, but I didn’t deserve an of course and I knew that. I knew I deserved to be slapped by her and told to leave her alone for the rest of my life.

“From where?” She asked surprising me. It was a good question, where did I expect us to start over from?

“Right before your brother walked in.” I decided, that was a good spot. That was when I messed everything up so now I was going to try and fix it all starting back there,

“Okay, but I’m not making out with you with morning breath.” I laughed, I had forgotten that was what we were doing then, I would’ve been okay with that but I wasn’t going to push her right now.

“Not what I meant.” I partially lied, now that I was thinking about it all I really wanted to do was kiss and touch her. She was too perfect that I had to restrain though, I’ve ruined this all before I can’t ruin it again.

“What did you mean then?” She asked and I decided to go for it. Not trying hard enough is what ruined everything last time so maybe trying a little too hard will fix everything this time. If she thought I was coming on too strong I would back off but until then I was going to go with what my gut was telling me.

“Wear my jersey next Friday.” It was our first game and I knew she would probably be there already to cheer on Louis and Liam since we were playing his team. All the boys girlfriends or flings always wore their jerseys, like they did for american football or hockey so at least I could have some claim on her so that every other guy with eyes wouldn’t be trying to take her from me the next morning.

“What?” She was really cute when she was confused, her eyebrows always knitted together. I noticed that in class. I was definitely borderline stalker right now…

“To our football game, wear my jersey.” I said like it was obvious. “I want you there to cheer me on, it’s our first one and everyone has to play a half. Stupid rules that your brother has now put in.”

“Okay…” She said hesitantly, “Your guys’ football is soccer right? I really wouldn’t want to watch you lose all mobility in your knee in actual football.” I laughed, at least she still cared about me which was good. “Now go have a shower, you stink.”

I laughed even harder at that. “Will you be here when I get back?” I asked knowing the answer was probably no.

“No, I have to go do homework.” she said. “It’s that damn calculus assignment. It’s like impossible to do!”

Hmm, calculus. The class I was in with her. “I could work on it with you? I mean I could get cleaned up and ungross and we can figure it out together?”

We were starting over, I don’t think it was that bad a move to offer to work on homework together. Plus it would be a good idea to see her again, I still didn’t want to be alone all day today, yesterday was horrible for me.  
“Would that be a good idea with Louis and everything?” Fuck Louis, he’s an asshole who needs to see that Eleanor isn’t as innocent as he thinks and it’s about time that he figure that out. “I don’t want to come between the two of you.”

“If you don’t want me to come that’s fine but don’t think that Lois effects my outlook on this at all, he’s an ass sometimes.” She nodded and got up.

“So I’ll see you in like an hour?” She said, and I swear her eyes were hopeful.

“I’ll see you then love.” It would be nice to be on her territory for once, we wouldn’t have to be here in my now dissolved room. I knelt up on my elbows to watch her walk out only to see that my room was weirdly tidy. “Thanks by the way,” I said smiling sadly. I didn’t even deserve a second chance let zone to have her here all night cleaning up the mess I got myself into last night.

“Yeah yeah, your welcome.” She winked at me grabbing her coat off or my closet door handle which was closed for once. “See you later idiot.” I laughed while she left my room.


	9. Chapter 9

**Alex**

“No El, we didn’t do anything stupid. He was seriously there for studying.” Eleanor shook her head at me. I don’t know why I had to defend myself to her but for some reason the idea of her and Sophia thinking I slept with Niall made me uncomfortable. They hadn’t even really seen us together, only for a couple minutes at the party the first night. I had to miss calculus today so I hadn’t seen Niall yet so she didn’t even know we were even a thing right now. Obviously Eleanor had been talking to Louis about Niall and my ‘study’ date because I had no idea how else she would’ve even known about it.

I say study lightly because we didn’t really get much studying done while he was over and in my room, there was a lot more kissing and groping than actual studying but I wasn’t really complaining. We did eventually move to the games room because we thought we might focus better but Louis was in there with Harry. We then moved up to the kitchen and we couldn’t do anything but study because Jay was in the next room. “He was, we had a calculus assignment that’s due on Friday so we were trying to get it done early.” That was kind of a lie, he just really wanted help with what we had learned so far in calculus and I already knew everything we learned so far.

“For some reason I don’t believe you,” she wiggled her eyebrows at me and I just rolled my eyes at her antics. Maybe her and Louis were better for each other than I thought originally. They both assumed I would sleep with Niall right after I started talking to him again and then they were both extremely childish about it. “What kind of guy comes to a girls house and into her bedroom simply to study?” She asked me and I didn’t really know how to answer. She wasn’t going to believe any argument I gave.

“Niall would apparently,” I said looking down at my lunch hoping she might drop it. My mouth apparently didn’t agree that the topic should be dropped though. “Because it happened and we studied so some guys would do it.” She just shook her head and took a bite out of the wrap that she had purchased for lunch, I was satisfied with how the conversation ended in my favour as of right now.

“So, what happened the other night that I had to cover for you anyway?” I thought I had gotten out of her questions yesterday about when I went to Niall’s originally when she came over and asked nothing before going right into Louis’ room, not even saying hello.

They had been argued about something so I went back to my room assuming they wouldn’t want me to eavesdrop. This plan failed though since I could hear them from my own room down the hallway anyway. I just ended up putting music into my ears to tune their yelling out. She left and he came to my room with some tear stains after a while, I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell which was okay with me. What happened in his relationship wasn’t any of my business anyway just like what happened in mine shouldn’t have been any of his business. “Louis was asking me questions about Alana all night and I had to make up this entire story.” I laughed at how she wanted me to think this put her up, Eleanor loved creating gossip though. She was the opposite in Louis in this way, she could come up with the elaborate story whereas Louis would just dramatize the stories that he already has. “It’s not funny, it was really hard! He always knows when I’m lying!”

“Max just needed something from me,” I lied hoping she would believe it but knowing that she almost definitely wouldn’t. I didn’t want to sell Niall out especially after he had put so much of his trust into me, so I was going to make sure that didn’t happen. Max was the only other person I could think of that would’ve needed me at a random time in the week without any real warning, but I wouldn’t believe that lie if I was her. It was honestly a load of bullshit considering he lived in Dartmouth still and I was here.

“All night?” She didn’t believe me obviously but I prayed she wouldn’t press anymore as I nodded, why would he need me all night when I lived so far away? I didn’t need her to believe me in the long run anyway, she could tell Louis I was lying but then she would have to admit that she lied too. Just because she didn’t believe me didn’t mean that she would rat me out to my overprotective brother. “Anyway, it’s unimportant anyway. Your personal life, not mine.” I internally sighed when she said this. “So I thought you and Niall weren’t on speaking terms anymore. Last time we spoke about it you seemed pretty pissed at him.” And we were back on this topic..

“Shit happened,” I shrugged. What she said was true but once again I wasn’t going to rat him out especially not out to Eleanor who was obviously going to be team Louis with anything that happened between the two of us. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, and same thing with Louis.

“Speak of the devil,” I said smiling as I saw Niall come barreling into the cafeteria with Harrys arm around his neck loosely. He was smiling and laughing and he looked more like the Niall I met when I moved here and less like the Niall I met this weekend. I liked how happy he looked with his friend but when his eyes caught mine I swear the smile grew even more.

That made butterflies flutter into my stomach.

I saw him say something to Harry before making his way over to where Eleanor and I were sitting as Harry walked towards the food line. “Hey,” I said smiling over at him as he approached us rather quickly. I guess this means he really was going to try and start over, which meant he wasn’t going to ignore my existence and I wasn’t going to ignore his. That made me weirdly content, even if I couldn’t see anything happening with us anyway.

“Hey,” he responded the smile never leaving his face as he leaned down and kissed my forehead gently making the butterflies go crazy in my gut. It didn’t feel unnatural when his lips hit my skin like it did when my mom or even Jay would do the same, it felt weirdly right. It felt like every inch of my skin was just there for his lips to touch. “Anyone sitting here?” He asked motioning to the seat next to me. Should I mess with him and tell him my new boyfriend is sitting with me? Probably not.

“No,” I said. “But sadly there will be no one occupying my seat in a moment.” The smile left his face at that and I laughed at the adorable little pout that took it’s place. Not messing with him about a boyfriend was a great idea, messing with him in this way was so much better than anything I’ve done.

“Why not?” He asked sitting down next to me with his body turned to look at me his foolish bottom lip sticking out. I just wanted to grab it with my teeth before placing my lips to his just to get rid of the foolish pout.

“Well I still need to go get some food,” I said motioning at the empty space in front of me while his eyes narrowed at me catching on that I actually wasn’t leaving. “So I’ll be up there while your sitting there, hence my seat being empty right now.”

“What do you want to eat?” I laughed at his weird question and he just rolled his eyes at me. “I still need to go get food too so what do you want, I’ll get it for you.” No no no, he is not going to do that right now. I didn’t need him to think that I was going to start relying on him in any way at any point.

“You can’t do that Niall,” I said shaking my head. I knew he was probably going to push but I didn’t know what they had up there and I still didn’t really trust the food here. It was a lot different from home and I was already a fairly picky eater.

“Yes I can” he said taking my wallet out of my hands and placing it on the table in front of me so that I couldn’t just get up and leave. I didn’t want to let this go without a fight, but he didn’t seem like he was going to give in at all either. I had an unnatural fear of the unknown and it was only becoming worse the longer I was here, and not having control over little things like this started to make me panic. Maybe I did need a psychologist.

“I don’t know what they have” I argued hoping he would just give up. “And I might not like…” He just gave me this look and I shut up. It was like I knew exactly what he was thinking by just the gleam in his eyes and it made me shut up instantly, he was telling me I was being ridiculous which I knew I was.

“Do you trust me” he asked and I felt a little uneasy about this whole thing. I was being crazy but I couldn’t help it. Of course I trusted him, why wouldn’t I trust him really? But did I trust the food here? That was a definite no as of right now.

“With food? maybe not” I responding thinking that was the safest option right now.

“Just wait here, if you don’t like it i’ll eat it trust me” he said. “And if you do like it no harm done right? If you absolutely hate it I’ll let you go up there and buy something new.” That was an okay deal I guess, I just needed to try a little nibble.

“Fine” I said and he kissed my cheek before jumping up and running to catch up with Harry who was looking at the menu for today near the front of the line. He must be saving a spot for the blonde haired Irish boy.

Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea letting him go up and get my food, he seemed a little too excited.

“Already paying for meals for you, moving pretty fast eh?” Eleanor said once Niall had left. I hadn’t even remembered she was there throughout our conversation but she hadn’t left the other side of me while she was accidentally excluded. I must of had a blank expression on my face because she quickly followed up with “I’m totally joking, I just meant because you know. Your wallet’s still here and he’s gone. Your not moving fast, don’t worry.”

I looked in front of me and sure enough my wallet was still there and closed. “Bastard,” I muttered as I looked back over at him and Harry. They seemed to be in a very serious conversation about what was on the menu today. I don’t know why that worried me even more but it did. “He must’ve just not thought about it. I’m not letting him pay for me though since I’m apparently loaded now.”

“Sure,” she nodded looking behind me at something, I turned around to see Louis approaching in what looked like his football uniform. I raised my eyebrows at him but he simply winked before swinging into the chair on the other side of Eleanor. He didn’t kiss her on the cheek or anything which made me curious about their fight, but I was not one to be all up in his business right now. “Hey babe, how was practice?” Eleanor asked, but the tone in her voice wasn’t quite the same as it normally was.

“Well, we’re on break right now because Niall and Harry were babies and claimed they needed food.” I giggled looking over to where the two of them were now paying for the food they got, they were joking around with each other and laughing happily. “I think we’re just going to cancel it until after school, hence why I’m here.”

“To cancel on me, again,” Eleanor sighed looking over at Louis. Hmmm, was this a hint as to why they were fighting? I tried to pretend I wasn’t interesting by looking at a random point on the wall, but I don’t think they would even notice if I was looking anyway. I know I should leave them alone with their drama but I couldn’t help the curiosity that was taking over me.

“No, I’ll be done by seven o’clock,” Louis reasoned but how Eleanor groaned told me that that wasn’t good enough for her. “And you can come over or vice versa then. We need to talk about this El.”

Yes, it’s about to get juicy… I shouldn’t want to know this though. “You know what Louis, how about we just ignore it like you’ve been doing since it happened? Why don’t we just pretend everything is perfect like we always do and you can go on being the star football player that you are and I’ll continue being your little trophy girlfriend.” Ooooh, that must’ve hurt. This fight was more intense than I thought it was.

“El, please don’t do this right now,” Louis seemed to be begging which was new for him. “I’ll skip practice if it means that much to you.” She just shook her head at him and got up. I didn’t think she would leave without saying anything but she did, she just turned and walked out the door of the cafeteria. Louis didn’t get up and move though, and I just gave him a dumbfounded look. Why wasn’t he chasing her right now? “She needs some time on her own,” Louis said looking back at me with a sad smile. “She’ll come around, she has to.”

He looked defeated though. It was like he didn’t believe what he was saying either, she wasn’t going to come around even though that’s the only thing he wanted right now. He was giving up on them instead of fighting for their relationship. I don’t know why this was all happening or what was wrong between the two of them but I just felt bad for them. They seemed to be having a rough go recently.

“Hey Lou,” I heard a voice I had grown fond of over the last little while say as a hand landed on my shoulder. “Any news about practice?” I turned to see Niall squeeze my brothers shoulder gently.

“Yeah, I think we’re moving it after school.” Louis sighed rubbing his hands over his face. Niall and Harry just kind of looked at each other but didn’t question it any further. They sat on either side of me and Harry instantly went into a conversation with Louis. He was practically whispering in his ear for 5 minutes before Louis nodded and they both stood up. I watched them leaving the cafeteria before turning my attention back to Niall who was just watching me. He smiled when his eyes caught mine again but I couldn’t return the gesture this time. My gut told me that Louis wouldn’t come out of this happy;

“Him and Eleanor are fighting,” I said looking down at my hands. I know I said it was their business and I wasn’t going to press but it hurt me that Louis was so upset. He didn’t deserve to have her mad at him because of his dream, even if I didn’t know if that was why. He seriously cared about her more than she deserved.

“I know,” Niall said grabbing my hand. “Trust me princess, it’s been expected for a while. No couple lasts as long as they have in high school without a fight.” I nodded, I guess he had a point there. “Now, you need to eat so try this.” He put something in front of me that looked like a giant pizza pocket and I just lifted my eyebrows at him. “I’m not telling you whats in it until you try it. All I can promise is that there’s no mystery meat and no mushroom because I know you’re allergic to them.”

I nodded taking a bite slowly, I remember telling him I was allergic to mushrooms during one of our random conversations over the past month. I’m glad that he remembered while buying me food so that I didn’t you know, die from eating one. To think about it I also told him how any other meat beside chicken, ham, or steak freaked me out. The fact he remembered those small details that I told him made me really happy.

The food was okay, it wasn’t anything special, but it was better than most of the stuff I’ve had here in the UK. “It’s like a pizza pop, I had those all the time when I was younger.” That was true, I know that the type of food wasn’t called a pizza pop but we could never afford anything other than pizza pops when we grocery shopped. If I was lucky when I was younger we would get a large pizza once a year on my birthday usually, so pizza pops were what had to do usually at home.

“What in the world is a pizza pop?” Niall looked confused, how didn’t he know what a pizza pop was? They were what everyone ate in Dartmouth, especially you lunches at school when you didn’t want to buy anything from the overpriced cafeteria.

“This but more mass produced, and much smaller, and by pillsbury.” I tried to explain, and then it hit me. Pizza pops might be a Canadian thing, hence why he doesn’t know what I was talking about. “It’s a frozen lunch thing that I ate a lot at home over the week. They were cheap, easy, and tasty.

“So do you like it though?” Niall asked hope shining through his blue eyes.

“Is is better than your pizza pops in Canada?” I didn’t want to completely lie to him, I mean it was better but the flavour wasn’t one I would personally eat everyday. I decided to give him a simply yet true answer.

“Sure,” I said smiling at him. “It is much better in the way it’s made. Not as cooked from the freezer and mass produced, much more made in a kitchen where they don’t want to poison us so we all die early.” If he thinks I’m kidding I am definitely not. They were trying to kill us slowly over by the states.

The look of triumph on his face made my heart race and made lying even if only a little bit completely worth it. He acted like I had just told him he won my heart with this piece of pizza. It wasn’t hard to make him happy but it still gave me a sense of fulfilment every time I was the one who made that smile appear on his wonderful face.

**Niall**

It was Thursday evening and I was wired right now. Any hope I had of sleeping or anything like it was out the window. Louis had gave me strict instructions to stay home from school today in hopes that my knee might heal or at least be good enough for the game tomorrow, and I had missed all of Wednesday because of an appointment I had with a surgeon about my knee. That means I had done absolutely nothing but drive to the hospital and visit Jay for a bit in over two days.

This didn’t only mean two days without my boys, or without school, it also meant two complete days without her. I knew it was probably healthy for me to be separated from her for some time but I missed her already. I missed making her laugh and having her happiness rub off on me when she was always so positive. Even on her worst day she would make sure to have a smile on those soft lips of hers.

I needed to at least stop the stalker tendencies that I was having right now, she wasn’t even my girlfriend and I’d only known her like a month. But damn did I fall harder in that one month than I have ever fallen for anyone in my life. It may be a problem but it also might be the best thing that’ll happen in my life.

I chose to send two texts out from my phone to hopefully take my mind off of some stuff in my life, especially my sick obsession with my best mates sister. The first was to Alex, okay maybe I wasn’t getting over my obsession but I hadn’t even spoken to her since Tuesday. I didn’t want her to think I was ignoring her now.

_Hey beautiful girl, still planning on coming tomorrow? I’ll give you my jersey right before the game if you aren’t planning on bailing of being the most beautiful girl in the stands :)_

I was satisfied with it because it showed her I was still thinking about her while not sounding too clingy, though it was still extremely cheesy. Fuck it, if she didn’t like it whatever. I really sounded like a white teenage fangirl when I spoke to her. The second was to the group chat with all the lads in it, and I didn’t censor what I said.

NH: Hey you cunts, game night at my house? One hour.

It didn’t take very long before the responses came pouring into my phone.

LT: glad to see you’re inviting me over instead of my sister Ni.

HS: you’re not his booty call Lou,

ZM: want me to bring the stuff???

LP: Why the hell am I still in this chat?? I don’t come up until tomorrow…

LT: Why are we letting the competition know the game plan?

HS: If Niall sleeps with Louis’ twin is he technically sleeping with Louis?

LP: Louis, i would win even without your guys big mouths

ZM: Am I bringing the stuff or not?

HS: Aren’t twins always the same gender? Niall elaborate…

LT: Liam shut up you wanker, you’re just jealous because I have a hot girlfriend and you’re single as hell

 

ZM: So no stuff?

HS: What the hell is the stuff? Is it a gay tester?

ZM: What the hell is a gay tester Harry?

LT: Are we testing if Liam’s gay because he’s never kissed a girl?? It’s completely possible

HS: No, Niall because he’s dating your sister who is possibly a man…

LP: What the hell Harry?

I decided to stop whatever the hell was going on in this conversation.

NH: Just get to my house you twats

LP: Of course Niall, be there in a minute

HS: Your sarcasm is not appreciated Liam

ZM: And neither is your craziness Harry

LT: I’ll pick them up and be there soon.

NH: See you then

This was going to be an interesting night to say the least, especially since Harry seemed extremely interested in Alex and I. I was about to call and order some pizza when my phone went off again.

Alexandra the beautiful: Hey there stranger, was starting to think you might be avoiding me again. Of course I’ll be there wearing your jersey if that’s what you want! See you at the game :)

There was no school tomorrow, which fucking sucks. Three days off in a row.

I quickly texted her back telling her that I couldn’t wait before putting my phone down to get my TV room ready for the lads, they would probably be over all night.

_NH: Right, another day without seeing the sunshine because I don’t get to see you. I’ll see you tomorrow night._

Send.


	10. Chapter 10

**Alex**

I looked at Eleanor who was in the stands with me, and was the only other person in the stands with me. We had both driven over with Louis and there was still an hour until the game, we’d been sitting here almost thirty minutes already. We should’ve just came later with her car or something but Louis insisted he wanted us right by the bench, which meant we needed to get in early with him instead of waiting until a half hour before with everyone else.

“Can I tell you something about your brother and Niall? Something that not even Louis really knows?” Eleanor asked me looking forward the whole time, it was almost like she was nervous about telling me whatever it was. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know if not even Louis knew the information and it was to do with him.

I was about to say yes when I saw Niall quickly run out of the changing room on the other side of the field. I quietly thanked god for this slight ‘distraction’ from the conversation I was about to have with my brothers girlfriend. “Yeah, just give me one second,” I said jumping onto the field and running to meet him. I didn’t look back at her and in all seriousness all I cared about right now was Niall and seeing him for the first time in almost four days. “Got something for me?” I asked looking at the shirt in his hand. I was trying to say it in a flirty tone but I knew I failed badly, and so did he when he began laughing at my patheticness.

“Yes. Be thankful I’m giving you my good jersey not my sweaty gross one that I haven’t washed since the last practice I was actually allowed to attend.” I took the jersey out of his hand and pulled it over my head quickly replacing my skimpy tank top with the oversized t-shirt. I had chosen denim shorts and a tank top to wear to the game because not only was it cute in my eyes and hopefully in Nialls, it also would go well with the jersey. I had stolen Louis’ jersey to test how the whole outfit would look together. “Unfortuanately I have to wear that one so I can’t hug you whenever I score a goal or else you may get all gross.”

“You’re not wearing the Jersey right now,” I reasoned looking down at his shirtless and toned chest. I hadn’t actual ever had time to examine his bare chest. It was nice even though he was extremely pale. His muscles were beautiful and the pale glow only made them better. I just wanted to be able to have my eyes and hands on his torso at all times of the day and night everyday while I looked at him now. “Who said you can’t hug me right now?”

“The fact that I can feel your brother shooting daggers into my back right now.” I laughed and pulled him into a kiss. It might be childish but I wanted Louis to see me with Niall and realize that he couldn’t control my life, especially not my love life. It didn’t take long for my arms to go around Niall’s neck and for his hands to made their way to under the jersey’s material and onto my lower back inching dangerously close to my ass. He made sure our bodies were pressed perfectly together as he added more heat into the kiss. I forgot that we were in the middle of the field where everyone could watch us making out right now.

He pulled away slowly and brought his lips close to ear, his breath sending shivers down my spine. “As much as I love kissing you I really think we should stop.” i let out a small mhmm even though I really didn’t want to stop right now, or ever. “How good you look in my jersey and how well those shorts show off your ass to me is one of the most attractive sights in the world. That mixed with how soft your lips feel even just on my mouth is going to make me pretty hard right now, and I don’t want to have to explain that to the lads.”

I took a deep breath as heat began to raise in my whole body at his words. I had never seen this side of Niall but I had to say that it may be one of my favourites, even if he was revealing it at a rather inconvenient time for us. My brother was only a few feet one way and his girlfriend was the other direction.Having him talk like that so that only I could hear was really hot no matter where we were though.

I was too dumbstruck to have some remotely attractive or intelligent response for him. “I should get back to Eleanor then,” was all I could say, it was the only thing I could think to say that was safe. He placed one last kiss on my forehead before winking and walking the way he came from. I stood and admired his back muscles which may be better then his chest for a moment before turning back to the stands and Eleanor.

“Hey, sorry!” I said jumping over the barrier and sitting back in the seat next to her. “He just wanted to give this to me.” I smiled looking down at the jersey that I had put on, number 13 written on the back with Horan above it made me wish I had a mirror. It was probably 3 sizes too big for me but I didn’t care, I liked how it looked on me even when I was just looking down at it. Would this mean we were an item after all of the school saw me wearing his jersey? I mean Eleanor was wearing Louis’, and she said all the boys girlfriends sat with each other wearing their boyfriends jerseys.

“I tried to sleep with Niall last year” Eleanor suddenly said putting her face into her hands next to me and pulling me out of my thoughts. She did what? If I was told about that back home everyone would call her a slut, and they would all call Niall a home wrecker. I wasn’t home now so I guess I shouldn’t judge yet.

“What?” I asked unable to figure out what I could say next, I didn’t want to assume that i should hate her or that Louis didn’t know. I just looked at her in disbelief unable to form anything smarter than what, this had to be some sort of sick joke right now. She would never do that to Louis or to Niall, would she? She would never play two guys that she claimed to care about because she was bored?

“I need to tell you this, because it’s been eating me up inside. Nobody knows but Niall and me, and he’s a saint for keeping it from Louis.” I was even more confused now, why hadn’t Niall told me anything about this? I just looked at the changing room door where the boys were just coming out of the changing room to warm up. Niall had put his Jersey on but I couldn’t focus on him right now, my eyes went to Louis who still seemed so happy. Little did he know he was dating and hugging a liar and cheater. He had no idea what was happening underneath his own nose.

“At a party last year I got really drunk,” Eleanor continued without me pressing for her to, I don’t know if I wanted to hear it. Drinking, that meant this story was going to be even better, which meant I was probably going to hell for hearing it before Louis got to know what was going to hit him. “Alana reminded me of how I had never even kissed anyone besides Louis in my life, let alone date or sleep with them. He was my first time for everything in my life, we started dating secretly in ninth grade but he wanted to go public quickly into grade ten. That made me think I might want to change that and I knew Niall liked me since he got to town, like really liked me. I wanted a new experience…”

“Just stop there…” I sighed looking at her guilty face which I couldn’t help but think was partially fake. She must’ve felt bad but she obviously still regretted that Louis was her one and only. I didn’t care what her and Niall did in the past, it was their lives not mine and I didn’t know him or even Louis then. I did care that she was so willing to hurt Louis just because she had a little bit of alcohol on her system and she wanted to experience something new. She didn’t have the guts to talk to him about it like she should’ve.

“How far did you guys go?” I asked anger boiling in my stomach as I watched Louis and Niall joking around on the field. He had betrayed my brother too, it wasn’t only Eleanor who did it It take two to tango as they say. Niall wasn’t little mister innocent like he wanted everyone to think he was.

“We just talked a bit and I got him alone, which he was willing to do.” Of course he was, he was just like every other guy around. A pretty girl wanted to get him alone and I’m sure he would go no matter who it was. “Please don’t blame him for this though, he pushed me off of him after one kiss and told me that I was too intoxicated to do anything and that Louis was his best mate. He was quite drunk himself but he still knew his limits when it came to me. He didn’t let me do anything but Louis walked in while I kept trying to get him to kiss me.”

I rubbed my hands over my face, this was just too much right now. I shouldn’t have told her she could tell me anything, I didn’t need to know this when Louis didn’t. “Niall was going to tell him but I started crying and go into a panic attack so Niall being the gem he is covered for me. He didn’t do anything wrong but him and Louis weren’t as close anymore after that.” I nodded looking back at them joking together and it made me a bit happier, at least they were still friends somewhat. I don’t know how Eleanor didn’t break by ruining their friendship. One drunk mistake ruined an innocent bystander more than it ruined her.

“I’m so sorry, I just needed to tell someone. I don’t want to keep secrets from you, you’ve become one of my closest friends though I’m almost positive I’ve ruined all of that now by telling you.” Damn right she ruined it, I don’t know if I could look at her the same after hearing what she’d done to my brother and to a guy who had actually become one of the closest friends I think I’d ever had.

“I have to tell Louis you know,” I said looking back at her. I had to, he was my twin and I owed her a lot of a hell more than I owed her, he meant a lot more to me than she did. “It’s not fair if I know about it and he doesn’t.” She had to know that, maybe that’s why Niall had kept it from me so far. He knew it wasn’t fair that I knew before Louis knew.

“Let me tell him please, it’ll be better if he hears it from me.” That wasn’t really true, it wasn’t going to be good any way he finds out. He would be heartbroken the moment he found out but it wasn’t my place to ruin their relationship. “He deserves to know before he moves to Manchester at the end of June, and he deserves to know from me if we’re going to be breaking up anyway before the end of the summer.” Manchester? The end of June? How come he hadn’t told me about leaving so early in the year?

“What? Why’s he going to Manchester?” I was almost hurt as to why he hadn’t told me about this but I guess I hadn’t been around for very long, I didn’t know about a lot of the stuff going on in his life prior to my getting home.

“We’re both hoping on going to Manchester united for school next year, we learned that it’s been our dream for years.” I knew he was going there for school, he had told me that information. I was invited to go with him if I got in. “He’s received early admissions and I haven’t gotten accepted yet. He’s going for soccer in the summer but he’s been debating not going since you got here.” I nodded slowly, what did this mean?

“So if he doesn’t go can he still play soccer… Or does he??” She looked sadly down at her hands pretty much wordlessly answering my question.  
“He can’t play, and he loses his scholarship.” This only confirmed what I already had figured out about everything. I was going to ruin his dream, and he was willing to throw it all away while Eleanor was still waiting for hers to be confirmed.

“Hence the fight?” I asked, I can see why so much tension had been caused between the two of them right now. She was stressed out and guilty but he couldn’t see her side. He had his own set of worries that she didn’t understand at all. It was fire fighting fire which was only ending with them in pain.

“Yes, hence the fight.” She said looking sadly towards the field again. People were now trickling into the stands while a lot of the other girlfriends and even one guy in a jersey sat on the same bench as El and I. I started a conversation with another girl in the stands, I knew I shouldn’t be ignoring Eleanor but I didn’t know what to say to her anymore.

**Niall**

“Woo! Getting it in on the field!” Harry yelled when I walked back into the changing room after giving my jersey to Alex. I just rubbed my jaw a bit, that had to be the best kiss I think I’ve ever had. “Please refrain next time though, I don’t want to watch porn happen right in front of me, especially not gay porn.”

“Harry, shut up!” Louis said chucking a ball at his head. I just laughed and high fived Louis, I liked game days the most because Louis and my relationship went back to how it once was. We were no longer partially enemies but back to being best friends, he was back to being the guy I first met when I got here two years ago. I missed his friendship like this, I missed having a best friend like him, though Liam was a pretty decent replacement. Liam was the only one who knew everything about my life.

“Fine Lou, don’t get your knickers in a twist,” Harry said standing in his boxers only, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he didn’t have them on either. I would be even less surprised if he took them off and threw them to Louis saying they would fit him better. “Just because your girlfriend ain’t putting out any doesn’t mean you have to hate on our poor little Niall for kissing your sister and almost getting it in while a few feet away from you.” I scoffed at him.

“Harry, one kiss is not nearly getting it in. Just because you’re going to be the only single one soon doesn’t mean you need to be jealous of our Niall here,” Louis retaliated and all of the guys laughed. I’m glad Louis was taking the heat off of me for once, normally at school he would be chirping me too. But as I said, on game day we were back at the beginning when he actually liked me.

“Harry why are you in your boxers? We warm up in 10 minutes…” I asked looking at our practically naked team mate again, I just wanted to get off of this subject before Louis changed his mind and became hotheaded again.

“I’ll be decent by then, don’t you worry your pretty little Irish head.” I nodded because I knew he probably would be. “I won’t make any of your girls jealous with this hot as hell body,” dear lord this was going to be a long ass game.

***

“What do you think your doing Horan?” Liam asked as I blocked him on the field, Louis and I had it all planned out to sike him out. I just shook my head and looked at where Louis was planning out his corner kick, he looked like he was really contemplating where to kick it which I knew was bullshit. He had the rest of out team yelling at him to hurry up but instead he just made himself look more flustered. We used to do this move all the time before my knee injury and our fight.

“Don’t hate me because you’re losing Payno.” I said laughing a bit, I didn’t need to be the one blocking him right now but we both knew that I would be able to distract him better than anyone except for Louis, and he needed to be kicking.

“Yeah, they need to get you off the field and give some other blokes a chance to beat all of us now.” Liam said, and I happily accepted the complement. Louis, Liam and I were all planning on getting early acceptance into Manchester for soccer but when I hurt myself lat season I lost all hope of that, though Louis and Liam didn’t seem to. They liked to think that my knee was going to be fixed right away and that my admissions would be granted right after. The doctor I went to see told me differently though.

“Yeah, well it’s 2-0 with only 30 minutes remaining in the second half.” I said winking at Louis letting him know that I was doing that I was getting into his head slowly. “If you guys win even without me on the field I will pay you, I mean the gimp is beating you.”

“Hmmm, tempting, a gimp. Who are you talking about? Did Harry finally get hurt by doing stupid things?” I laughed at his ability to completely ignore me and my injury. They didn’t want to think they had lost one.

“Or you know, the one with the bum knee,” I stated looking back at him quickly. “You know, it makes it hard for me to play footy with you guys.” I know that was the truth, I didn’t tell Louis but my knee was killing me right now.

Liam just laughed lightly at this though. “Maybe we have a secret weapon that we’ll be pulling out,” he said still watching Louis closely. “Or maybe one of us have come to an injury recently worse than yours, think before you speak boy,” I motioned slightly with my hand for Louis to complete the kick finally, it was time. I hit the emotional strings in Liam when it came to me, and it distracted him enough.

“You are your secret weapon,” I laughed right as Louis kicked the ball in Liam and my direction after his ‘careful planning’. Liam caught it in a head butt just as we had planned and I acted like I was trying to get it at the same time. As we both ran after it Louis ran towards it about to make his steal. Everything went into slow motion as we all chased the small black and white ball as it went down the field. I loved this feeling.

I ran up beside Liam about to kick the ball from under his feet like we had planned, ready to aim it at Louis, when my ankle got caught onto Liam’s ankle and I was going down. Time moved even slower than before as my ankle began to twist and a horrible snap sounded from my joint. I tried to ignore the searing pain that ran through my knee and shin but I couldn’t once I hit the ground hard, the pain only becoming worse. I closed my eyes tightly as Louis was instantly yelling for the ref for a time out and running over to me.

I tried rolling over to get up but once my knee hit the ground right up I couldn’t help but groan as the pain grew worse in my knee, I don’t know how it kept getting worse. I just ended up rolling onto my back again gripping my leg to my chest trying not to scream out in pain.

I tried to replay what happened but my mind couldn’t focus on anything but the pain, I couldn’t think of anything else as Louis tried to pull me up with Liam’s help. “Someone help me get him to the bench!” Louis yelled out in the field, he sounded really frantic but he didn’t know. Nobody knew how bad injuring my knee again actually was. I felt like shit for having people worry about me, I could probably just limp off the field and walk it off with the help of some ice one last time, but I would never be back on the field after this.

I finally opened my eyes when I was stood up. I didn’t put my foot down on the ground but the first place I looked was my knee. It was swelling already, well shit. I probably just fucked up any chance of recovery that I had right now. I cursed under my breath and looked over to the bench where Alex was now on the field being spoken to by Harry. Fuck this, I would get injured at the game that she came to watch. I couldn’t come off weak now, I had to make it off this field like nothing was wrong.

I huffed and started to shrug Louis and Liam off of my arms while placing my foot on the ground below me. “I think I can walk it off, it’s fine boys,” I may have lied while testing my knee by putting some weight on my leg without their help. The pain was intense but it was pretty tolerable, I don’t know if I could make it all the way across the field but it wouldn’t last all day. I knew that I didn’t want their help, especially if I had to ask for it.

“Let me help you to the bench,” Louis asked giving me a look that said if I said no I was going to be benched the rest of the season, little did he know that was probably true. “I don’t want it to get worse right now.” I nodded kind of knowing that I wasn’t making it all the way over there alone and it was probably better if it didn’t get any worse right now. “Okay, Harry can get you some ice when you get over there. Li, I think we have everything.” 

“Niall,” Liam began but I just shook my head. I don’t want him to blame himself, guys get tripped in football all the time. It isn’t his fault that I didn’t let Louis know that my injury could possibly be worse than we once thought. “I’m sorry bro, you can get me back later?:

“Of course Li, I’ll just kick your ass at fifa,” I said before going our handshake with the arm that wasn’t around Louis’ shoulder. It sucked that I couldn’t finish kicking his ass at this game. I guess I had to leave it up to the rest of the team.

I limped over with Louis’ arm taking some of the weight off of my leg but mostly keeping myself up with the arm that was around his shoulders. The crowd started to clap as we approached the bench, the boys whooping and cheering. I looked up and winked at the girls from our school cheering as I got to the bench, it was all out of pity but I didn’t want to seem like it bothered me right now. I nodded at Louis as I sat down letting him know he could go back to the game. I winced as I straightened out my knee examining the damage that had been done and Alex came and sat beside me on the bench.

“Are you okay?” She asked handing me some ice. She looked worried and I hated it, I shouldn’t be the one who causes worry in her. I should be the one who makes her feel safe no matter what happens to me, I should be the tough guy that she can always count on. “It looks like it was a pretty bad fall, Liam looks pretty guilty about it.” She said and I looked over at Liam who was talking to Louis right now. They were trying to talk the ref out of a penalty towards Liam, it was a clean fall so I hope they won. “He must’ve known you were his actual biggest competition on the field.”

I laughed it off as I put the ice to my knee wincing a bit as the roughness hit but then sighing as it began to numb the pain. “Eh, it happens right? In fifa they purposely fall all the time to get the other team dinged.” She laughed even though she didn’t know what I was talking about. Hearing her laugh helped a little bit, it finally took my mind off of the pain. “Nothing I can’t handle. I’ve had much worse happen.”

She giggled as she kissed my cheek which was covered in sweat, I’m surprised she didn’t cringe at my sweat covered body when she say beside me. “Well at least you were kicking their ass by a landslide even without trying to get them in trouble.”

“I know, we’re way better than Liam’s team.” I said watching the field as Louis gave me a thumbs up and I smiled back letting him know I wasn’t in that bad of shape. I guess Liam wasn’t being dinged because he was running back to his spot on the field. It was nice to know Louis wanted me to be alright even if he kind of hated me. “I don’t know if you’re allowed down here though,” I said looking into Alex’s eyes for the first time and giving her a sad smile. I wanted her beside me, actually I just wanted to be cuddling with her and maybe occasionally kissing while we watched movies. Right now I had to be focused on the game that was happening in front of me though.

“I know, Harry told me already.” She said smiling back at me, hers was less sad though. “I just really wanted to make sure you were okay, the fact that you weren’t getting up kind of scared me.” She kissed my cheek before going back into the stands beside Eleanor again. I watched her walk over and smile awkwardly at Eleanor before beginning a conversation with Stan’s girlfriend on the other side of her. Weird, maybe they got into a fight. That would be horrible considering Eleanor and Louis.  
I turned my attention back to the game and did some backseat coaching. Maybe I could be assistant coach this semester, that would be a good job for me.

***

“You told her what?!” I yelled in Louis’ backyard where Eleanor had dragged me from the afterparty. It had only been going on for a few minutes and my knee was holding up pretty well considering the fall I had. It didn’t hurt anymore unless I was on it for more than an hour or so which I was when we kicked Liam’s ass in the game.

“I had to,” Eleanor said shakily. If she thought a panic attack was going to make me give in this time she was sadly mistaken. I had told her so many times to tell Louis but she always told me so many times that it was in the past and that we didn’t need to hurt him now that it was nothing but a kiss. I would not let her ruin Alex and me because she felt guilty for her mistakes, they were not mine. Louis might hate me for what I didn’t actually do but I refused to let Alex feel the same way. “She deserved to know.”

“And so did Louis,” I said pushing past her while she sobbed and entered the main room where the party was being held. I swear half of the school was here, finding her was going to be a task and a half. I was just so angry right now, I was going to tell her when the time was right. I was never planning on keeping this from her and now she probably thought I was.

“Hey!” I heard someone yell from behind me and I turned around and saw exactly who I wanted standing talking to Liam. They both made their way over to me her with a wide smile on her face and Liam with a look of regret. “I was just looking for you!” She said standing on her tippy toes and kissing my lips.

“Really?” I laughed a bit my previous anger fading away. “And hello Liam, you going to give me a kiss too?” I said puckering my lips towards him.  
“Not exactly,” Liam laughed as I wrapped my arm around Alex’s waist. I wanted her as close to me as she could get. “How’s the knee? I’m really sorry you took such a hard fall your first game back.”

I nodded bending my knee. There was still pain but it wasn’t as bad as it had been last year at this time. “It’s all good bro, nothing to worry about.” I smiled at him. He nodded and left us going to someone who had caught his gaze. “So,” I said looking down at the girl who was at my side now in a super hot skin tight dress. “Wanna go somewhere so we can talk?” No matter how much her adorable appeal was distracting me I needed to talk this out before it became too late and I couldn’t fix it.

“Are you coming onto me Horan?” She laughed, I didn’t even notice how bad it must’ve sounded from her end. I laughed too slightly shaking my head at my stupidity for phrasing it like that, though the thought had crossed my mind.

“No, of course not!” I said leaning down and kissing the top of her head while pulling her in so our fronts were plush with each other. I still wanted her as close to me as she could get. “I just have something I need to talk to you about and I need to get off this knee for a while.” I said, the first reason much more important to me.

“Of course, how about we go down to my room?” I breathed out into her hair as she said that in an innocent tone. How the tables have turned now.  
“Are you coming onto me now?” I laughed as she simply shrugged. Hmm, maybe the tables haven’t fully turned.

“Maybe a bit…” She said grabbing my hand and pulling me towards the stairs. Harry and Zayn gave me winks and thumbs up as we passed them, I simply flipped them off while she pulled me right past. I was thankful that I saw Louis still up here meaning him and Eleanor weren’t sleeping together down in his room. Alex pulled me right to the top of the stairs where she finally let go of my hand and motioned for me to go down.

I led the way to her room and sat down on the bed after kicking my shoes off at her doorway where all of hers were lined up. Her room was so clean, I didn’t understand it. Everything was always in the right place whereas in my room nothing had a place except for when she would randomly clean it.

“So,” she said walking over and straddling my lap. I quickly wrapped my arms around her waist ensuring she didn’t fall backwards. “What did you want to talk about.” She said pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. She had been drinking, I could smell it, great. Just what I needed right now.

“Well, mostly what Eleanor told you earlier…” I was interrupted by her grinding her hips down and her lips on my neck. I groaned a bit at the sensation as she continued her actions. “I just want you to know,” damn it was hard to speak right now. She was having a time distracting me from what I wanted to say.

She finally lifted her lips off of my neck and stopped her hips. I groaned at the loss of sensation but sigher internally that she was going to let us talk. “Can I say, what she told me is really damn hot. That you could tell her no because of the care you had for either her or my brother is really sexy. I always liked the bad boys,” she said moving her hips again slowly and pushing me back onto the bed. “But now I see the good boy is way better.” She finished bring her lips down to mine.

She wasn’t mad at least, apparently she was more turned on. “Oh my god, you are the most perfect woman ever,” I said as she began to kiss down my neck again. I knew I was getting hard at this point, I mean who wouldn’t be when this goddess was trying to sleep with me. I had to stop this though.

Then she moves her hips like that and I forget everything except for her and her perfection that I did not deserve.


	11. Chapter 11

**Alex**

_“365 days in a year. That’s 365 24 hour segments, or 8760 60 minute segments or 525600 60 second segments or… Well I guess you get the point. It’s a whole lot of time, yet seems like none at all._

_What does this have to do with anything? you may ask. Why am I bringing up the measurement of time? Well as each second passes it seems like nothing ever changes in everyday life. Each second seems like nothing is happening in your life, especially when you live in a small town where everyone has known you since you were in diapers or you’ve changed theirs. One second is merely another moment passing leaving you bored and trapped._

_Nothing seems to happen to you that can change anything in life in short spurts of time but when you look back a year later nothing is the exact same, everything seems to be different than it once was. Time passes whether we want it to or not, and as time passes you change as a person, even if you don’t notice it.”_

 

“You wrote that?” Niall asked me, his eyes lighting up as he read the end of what was in my journal, at least the one I let others see here. I shook my head, I never really showed anyone my writing. I’d shown Louis once or twice and showed Max and my mom back home, anyone else who asked I told them no. 

Niall had asked me what meant more to me than life itself though, something real that wasn’t Louis or world peace which were the two answers I originally gave. I told him my writing and he asked to see it. I reluctantly handed it over to him while making sure I had my other journal was hidden under my mattress still.

“It’s really good babe!” I laughed at his enthusiasm, it wasn’t all that good. I wrote it right before my life changed, I’m on the fence if it was actually for the better but right now it feels like it was. My whole life I wanted to inspire people, become a writer so that I could influence other peoples lives who read it. Now that wasn’t really an option for me anymore, it wasn’t something that I wanted to do. 

“Thanks, but I honestly think someone else could have dictated it better than I did.” I laughed as he looked at me with an appalled expression. “What?” I laughed when he put the book down and began walking to my bed where I was sat.

“You will never know how amazing you are,” he said leaning in and pecking my nose. “Every part of you inside and out never stops reminding me that you are better than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. You’re smart, sexy, good at writing, strong as hell emotionally and physically, and you made me trust you. I never trust anyone,” my heart fluttered at this as he knelt down in front of me and looked into my eyes. I don’t know how we got here but we did.

“Niall, it’s just a thing I wrote.” I said looking at my hands. “It doesn’t have anything to do with anything really, I was just reflecting on life in general.” That was partially true, that’s all I really wrote before I moved here, it was just my journal for random thoughts that I thought people would judge me for. Now I have one that’s more personal, one that actually has real deep thought about my life.

“See what I mean. You’re putting yourself down right now!” He put a finger under my chin so that I was looking at him again. I fluttered my eyelashes a bit acting oblivious even though I knew what he was talking about exactly. “Every time someone complements you or says something nice you say their wrong. I want you to see yourself like I see you. I wish you could see yourself in the way everyone else sees you.”

“Okay mister.” I said laughing. “I’ll just call up my genie friend and ask him to switch our bodies and minds so that I can see what you see and you can see what I see, that you shouldn’t shut people out. You shouldn’t be scared of who you are because truthfully, I like the real Niall better than the fake one everyone else seems to know.” He shook his head slightly laughing at my statement. “You would see that your whole mysterious and completely tainted act, though it works for you, isn’t who you really are. You’re not a hurt little boy anymore.”

“Ever write about me?” Quick change of subject there, I was not ready for this question. My mind and heart began battling on what to tell him. Do I lie or not? Do I say that yes, I have pages upon pages devoted to him and my brother and Liam or do I tell him what I told Louis and Liam, I only write about experiences not people.

“No, why would I write about you?” My brain won, I lied like I always did. Dang it heart, you need to start upping your game. You always lose in situations like this, in ones where I wished my brain would just shut up. I shouldn’t be lying to Niall, I don’t have to show him what I wrote but he doesn’t have to be in the dark about it.

“I don’t know, just wondering if you ever had inspiration from people instead of occurrences in your life.” That’s what they always wondered, I write about both but I see the people as experiences here. It’s never the same twice when I’m with any of them. They were my new experiences now.

“I don’t.” The look of disappointment that crossed his face hurt, why did it matter so much to him though? Why would it matter if I wrote about him or anyone? He would be disappointed with what I wrote, it’s wasn’t light and fluffy like this journal. A lot of it was actually dark even for my writing.

“Cool, well what do you want to do now then?” He asked laying back onto my bed pulling on the back of my shirt trying to get me to join him. “I mean I love laying here and doing nothing but talking about life too but we should do something exciting for once. I think I could recite your whole life story backwards by now without your help.” That caused me to laugh, if only he knew how much I hadn’t told him yet, how much I kept a secret out of fear. I wasn’t going to tell him everything about myself until he decided to open up to me too, until he decided that I was worth it.

“I don’t know, you begged to come over here, what do you want to do?” I asked turning over so that I could look at him again. I had laughed at his want to come over but he claimed he missed me too much to stay away.

“Make out,” he said winking at me. “But I guess that kind of defeats the purpose of not just laying here so maybe not. Though those lips look appealing in every single way.”

I hit him with a pillow before kissing his cheek gently. “How about no, maybe you could play me a song?” I said keeping my eyes on his face, music was never an extremely safe place to go with him, sometimes he would open up but most of the time he would just close down completely again and I would regret bringing it up.

“Nope, no, not happening.” He said sitting up quickly and staring at the wall. Yep, I was going to regret it once again. I didn’t understand how he could go from telling me that he thought I was the most trustworthy person he knew to shutting me out completely.

“Why not?” I whined, I was being a brat but I was sick of him being so closed off about things when I trusted him with everything, well most things.

“Alex. Don’t push it okay. I’m never going to play again by the looks of things so just let it go for both of our sakes.” He said getting up and walking back towards my desk chair to get his jacket, of course he was going to leave now.

“Okay, wanna watch a movie then?” I said hoping he would turn back around and talk to me instead of running away again. I knew the answer before he even opened him mouth again but I had hoped I was wrong, I had hoped for once that I didn’t choose a guy who was just like every other one, I wished I had chose one who would start choosing me.

“Actually I forgot about this project I had due… I should go.” He said leaving without giving me a chance to say goodbye. Well that didn’t go well, maybe I shouldn’t have lied. But two can play at that game really, if he was going to be mean and closed off so could I…

**Niall**

I was a dick…. She showed me her writing and I got up and just left. Why did such a stupid thing have such a large effect on me? I grabbed my guitar again and put my fingers in the position for a g chord, I couldn’t get myself to strum though. I knew I needed to play, that’s the only way to get over all this but I couldn’t. I couldn’t get my brain to shut off and stop saying this is what killed him, if I didn’t love music or if I’d never played he would never have died.

I grabbed all the sheets off my bed. 

“ _Living out of cases_

_Packing up and taking off_

_Made a lot of changes_

_But not forgetting who I was_

_On the horizon_

_But I know I know I know I know_

_The moon will be rising back home,_

_Don’t forget where you belong, Home_

_Don’t forget where you belong, Home_

_If you ever feel alone, Don’t_

_You are never on your own_

_And the proof is in this song”_

I could write a whole song for her but I couldn’t strum one chord or sing one note for myself. I was a coward and I hated to admit it but I was, and I wasn’t doing anything to change it. I didn’t deserve any of the happiness that she brings me because I couldn’t even give her the one thing she wished for from me, and that’s to completely open. I quickly grabbed my phone, I needed to apologize instead of think of new reasons why I hated myself, wallowing in self pity wasn’t going to help either of us in this situation.

_NH: Hey, sorry. Music is just a sore spot for me. Make it up to you?_

I sent it biting my lip and staring at the screen. I was waiting for the day where she just gave up on me and didn’t accept my apology. That was going to be the worst day of my life but I knew it was going to come eventually. I just hoped today was not that day.

_Alexandra the Beautiful: Apologizing less than an hour after? I’ve trained you well ;)_

I laughed, she did have me trained. Maybe if she stuck with me long enough she could get me back to my old self. She could get me back to the self I was before all of this happened to me. Back to the guy I was in Ireland. I wanted that, I hoped that could happen eventually.

_NH: Haha, very funny. How can I make it up?_

_Alexandra the Beautiful: Come back over and watch a movie with me?_

_NH: You know what watch a movie is code for right ;););)_

I knew this was risky to send but she usually laughed when I tried to flirt, she said it reminded her of a guy back home. I don’t know if that was good or bad but if I could make her smile or laugh I was cursed with the need to do it anytime it was possible.

_Alexandra the Beautiful: I told you last time I’m not doing anything with you._

I knew that, and I was glad she felt that way. I was saving myself and the fact that she wasn’t ready gave me less temptation to go any farther than groping. It also meant that maybe she didn’t trust me fully either making me not as bad a person. I was still a bad person but trust goes bath ways, right?

_NH: Can I come in an hour?_

I needed to shower and clean up a bit. I came home and attempted to work out a bit to cool off, which was of course a bad idea because of my knee.

_Alexandra the Beautiful: Sounds lovely._

I was going to make this up to her, I had to become a man that she deserved.


	12. Chapter 12

**Alex**

It was October 29th already, I don’t know how the past two months went by so fast but they did even with school. Niall had taken me on like 5 dates and I still had no idea what we were to each other. Were we dating? Were we not? I just didn’t know, but I did know I hadn’t seen him with any other girls since.

“So,” Eleanor said as Sophia, her and I stepped out of her car into the parking lot of the mall where they insisted we go costume shopping. “What are you both being?”

“What are you being?” Sophia asked her.

“Sally from nightmare before Christmas. Louis is being Jack.” Eleanor smiled obviously extremely excited about her couple costume. I couldn’t go back to being best friends with her after the game but I was trying, she made me sick still sometimes. She hadn’t told Louis yet, she always had some sort of excuse as to why she couldn’t. He had to focus on soccer or she didn’t want to break up before Halloween. 

“I want to be a cat.” Sophia said and I couldn’t help but laugh a bit. I don’t know what it was like here but at home every slut dressed up as a cat or a mouse. “What?” She asked faking being offended. “Liam’s going as batman and maybe I can be his catwoman.” She started shimmying and Eleanor couldn’t help breaking out into hysterics with me. I love her obsession with my cousin, it was great.

“Or a scaredy cat because you can’t get the guts to speak to him,” Eleanor jabbed making me laugh even harder. Sophia swiftly hit her as we walked through the entrance of the mall. “So Alex,” Eleanor said looking at me. “What’re you planning on going as?”

“Yeah,” Sophia said looking at me. “Niall and you going in couple costumes? Maybe a sailor or and a first mate? Maybe an egg and bacon because of his obsession with food? If you are please tell me he did not choose the costume.”

“I was thinking of being a cowgirl,” I said looking at the stores as we walked slowly past a couple of them. “Niall said nothing about a couple costume, that’s not my thing anyway. Like go for it if it is but I don’t go for that.”

“Oh my, we can make that so sexy!” Eleanor squealed as she grabbed my hand with hers leading me into Topshop first, I knew it was her favourite, Louis told me she loved. I know we could make it sexy, that’s exactly why I chose it over everything else. Liam and me were spitballing ideas for a while on Skype the past week. He had suggested I be something like a Disney Princess but I decided against that right away.

“Are you and Niall an official thing now?” Sophia asked as she looked a a black leather jacket in the front of the store. I’m not sure why we were in Topshop, it’s not where we should be going halloween shopping is it? I mean, I guess I could find some cute clothes here but all I really need is boots and a hat.

“Well, not exactly…” I answered actually thinking for a while. Were Niall and I a thing? Or was I just being one of those crazed girls? I mean, he was pretty into Eleanor according to Louis and her before I came into town so maybe I was just some fun before he left for university since he couldn’t have his first option…

“What do you mean not exactly?” Eleanor asked looking at me in disbelief. “She’s crazy Soph, he’s totally crazy about you!” She said looking at me with disbelief. “He seems to only be able to focus on you lately.” 

“I’m not entirely sure what we are,” I said which was the truth. We weren’t nothing but we weren’t really something yet. He didn’t ask me to be anything yet so I guess we weren’t, when he asked I could be sure enough to say if we were something. “I mean, we’re nothing official or anything, we’re just kind of… I don’t know.” 

“But you’re something?” Sophia asked checking herself out in the mirror. 

“I assume so.” Eleanor answered for me looking at Sophia and nodding her head. “By the way that would be killer in a cat costume. With a black tank top and some leggings, you’d look hot and ready to stare at Liam from a distance.”

“That’s not a good thing to assume about…” I said pulling up a plaid shirt from the rack. I quickly pulled off my sweater and put it on tying it around my waste. It was perfect for a cowgirl costume, maybe I wouldn't need Liam’s shirt then. I didn’t even bother looking at the price tag, I knew I would be able to afford it.

“Well I assumed Louis liked me and look where it took us. We’re all good now.” Eleanor said holding a dress in front of her checking it out in a mirror. That pissed me off more than anything, Louis and her were far from perfect or even good.

“Well I don’t know much about relationships, but I’m sorry to tell you I’m not seeking any sort of advice right now.” I said not even caring if it came off of rude. She was not the one who should be giving me advice on how to deal with Niall. I think we both knew damn well that she didn’t handle Niall well when she had the chance.

“Okay okay,” Eleanor said holding her hands up in surrender. “That shirt looks amazing by the way, with a pain of booty shorts and a pair of boots.” I nodded, I was actually really excited for this party, I had never celebrated Halloween except for trick or treating until I was like eight years old. When Niall told me about the party I got excited. 

“So are we all going for a sexy look?” Sophia asked taking her jacket off and placing it back on the hanger picking up a black tank top too.

“That’ll be kind of hard for me considering my costume is of a dead girl.” Eleanor said laughing and grabbing what looked like a hideous dress. “Plus I don’t have anyone to impress unlike you two single ladies.” I laughed rolling my eyes. I guess I just needed to ignore until after the party the fact that she was hurting my brother.

“From the looks of it Alex will have no problem impressing Niall,” Sophia said earning a slap in the arm from me. I don’t know why but these two girls were going to be my only female friends this year, I knew it. I was okay with it 

“Red lace bra under it and she’ll definitely be getting lucky and a boyfriend that night,” Eleanor agreed. I don’t know about the getting lucky part but maybe we could have some fun.

**Niall**

“Come on!” Stan yelled at the screen as Louis and him played fifa. I don’t know why but an hour ago they all came barrelling into my bedroom while I was napping, lifting me up and threw me onto my couch.

I got the news yesterday from my doctor that they don’t even think surgery will help me out now, my knee is too far gone. I called Louis and told him that I’m officially off the team and he was gutted. When they threw me onto the couch Zayn said if I couldn’t play actual soccer at least I could still kick most of their asses at fifa. I didn’t feel like playing though, so it consisted of Louis playing everyone.

I hadn’t told Alex yet, I wanted to. I really wanted to but get myself to admit it to more than one person yet. I couldn’t admit fully to myself that I ruined myself, that I had made myself weak enough to not even be able to count on myself.

“No no no!” Louis yelled as Stan got close to shooting a goal. “You can not beat me you fat ass loser!” All the guys started laughing while I just continued looking at my phone. Maybe I should just text her or call her and tell her. I wouldn’t feel like such an asshole then. She’d texted me that other day asking to hang out and I had considered it but I was too busy wallowing in self pity to see her.

I missed her, but I was doing it right this time. I refused to drink away my problems, instead I cried and called my brother and set up a time to go back to Ireland. I hadn’t been there in almost two years and my mom cried on the phone when I told her I was coming. Maybe I could just text her that, tell her some good news instead.

_Hey love, what’re you up to?_

I sent looking up as Stan yelled some more profanities at the screen and at Louis. All of which were responded to by Harry saying inappropriate or Louis coming back with something even worse. I quickly got a response from Alex though.

_Just Halloween costume shopping with Eleanor and Sophia, can you guess what we’re going as? I’ll give you a hint, Sopia’s trying to impress Li and El’s trying to fool everyone still and I’m going as something you may fantasize about after_

I laughed shaking my head. “What’s that about?” Harry asked turning around to look at me from where he had Louis sitting on his lap. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” I said blowing him off. I didn’t laugh looking at Louis and Stan who were now having a bitch fight sitting beside each other. “Don’t worry about it Hazza.” He smiled oblivious to the fact that I didn’t want them there. I didn’t want to be alone, but I didn’t want to be surrounded by the group that I was letting down either. The only people I wanted here with me are Liam or Alex truthfully. The others were just laughing and having a good time which wasn’t exactly what I was in the mood for.

_Hmmmm, I know Louis’ going as Jack so I’m guessing couple costume. Something to do with Toy Story or Batman for Sophia. And I’m not sure I want other guys seeing you naked, though that would be a fantasy ;). I’m guessing El is still pissing you off_

I was too interesting in this conversation to care what the other guys were doing. I really needed her here over them. 

_You think? Right now I’m in the changing room pretending to be changing to get some time alone. Mind if I come over tonight? She’s coming over and I need to escape,_

Yes, she could definitely come over! I just hoped the boys followed Louis out the door when he left as he had to go meet up with El. 

_Of course, maybe a movie night?_

_Alligator: Sounds good, when’s a good time for you?_

I looked at the clock, it’s 6:00 pm right now, the lads should be leaving within he next couple hours, probably around 9:00. She could sleep over if she wanted, that would be even more lovely.

_How about 9ish? You can spend the night if you’d like, I mean it’s not like I’ll be expecting anyone else or we have school in the morning_

_Alligator: Yay! I will be sure to stay the night. Maybe we’ll get a bit more in than watching movies ;)_

_See you later alligator ;)_

She hated that nickname and I loved it. When I looked up again the lads had turned the TV off and were now all looking at me. I just looked back at the four of them shrugged and slouched back into my chair.

“Who’re you texting?” Louis asked throwing a pillow at me. I just shrugged and put my phone back in my pocket, we never had actual conversations over text, they were always in person or in an actual call so I knew that was safe.

“It’s obviously Alex,” Harry answered for me. I swear his obsession with our relationship was hitting an extremely creepy level of leave us the fuck alone. All he did was ask questions about what she was like.

“Fuck her yet?” Zayn chimed in winking at me.

“No, he’s too pussy.” Stan chirped. I just put my hands behind my head ready to watch this show unfold in front of me. I knew Louis would put an end to it before it went too inappropriate for his liking.

“He’s waiting till marriage guys,” Harry tried to defend me.

“She’s too hot for him anyway,” Stan said and I threw the pillow back at him.

“You think she’d go for you?” Zayn laughed.

“Well yeah, I’m a much better specimen.” 

“Shut up you lot,, that’s my sister you’re talking about. Anyway Niall is ten times the man any of you will ever be even if he is still a virgin. Especially you ugly cow Stan,” Louis said. Right on cue, he hated when we talked about Alex like this almost as much I did.

“Thanks Lou,” I chimed in. He was being nice to me and it was weird, it was almost like we never even had a fight last year lately.

“Anyway, are we doing a group costume or not?” Harry said looking at all of us.

“Obviously not, I don’t know why you ever thought that was a good idea” Zayn laughed again, he was on a roll today.

“I thought it was…” Stan said quietly.

“Well you guys can go as a couple costume then,” I joked. 

“I’m doing costumes with El,” we all knew that Lou.

“Whipped,” Stan huffed.

“At least he isn’t doing one with his best mate,” Zayn said throwing a pillow at Stan. My TV room was going to be in a state.

“Homophobe,” Harry grumbled. Aw, he was pouting. What else was new?

“Truth teller,” Zayn retaliated.

“What are you all being?” I asked, I had little idea what I wanted to be but I wanted it to be good unlike previous years.

“I’m going as Liam,” Zayn said and I just stared at him.

“What?” Harry laughed.

“I’m not going to the party and Liam’s taking my place, I’ll be with my sisters” ahh, Zayn was taking his sisters out for halloween, i had known that. I remember when Greg used to have to do that for me.

“I’m going as Jack,” Louis told us what we already knew.

“Harry! We should go as Bonnie and Clyde! You can be bonnie!” Stan exclaimed. He was excited by this idea even though it was extremely stupid. Two friends shouldn’t do couple costumes ever.

“Or we can go as a cat and a fish, you can be the fish!” Harry threw out there. Oh my god this was going to be horrible.

“Yeah!” Stan said as they moved to sit together in a huddle and brainstorm together. I just shook my head laughing, they kept things interesting if nothing else.

“Well since these two idiots are distracted what about you Ni?” Zayn asked me. “Alex and you going as a couple costume?”

“I was thinking about going as Prince Charming,” I said. “I don’t know what Alex is going as, only her and Li do. They say it’s a surprise.”

“Aww, how cute” Louis chimed it giving me a noogie. “You going as that to impress someone? I think you can fool enough people with it.”

“Shut up!” I said pushing Louis off of me with all of the force I could muster right then. “So what’s the plan with the end of the season?” I changed the subject. I did not need it to move back to Alex and I especially if Louis was planning on being part of that conversation now instead of stopping it.

“I don’t know, we lost one of best players,” he said as though it wasn’t me he was sighing about right now but some other guy on the team. “I guess we’ll have to take it as it goes. Harry will probably be on the field more but we’ll just use him as a pawn so we have enough lads on the field to play.”

I nodded, Harry sucked ass but I guess he was better than some of the freshmen. “At least it’s only like five more games.”

He nodded this time. “Yeah, coach and I had a question though.” What? A question for me? Had he not told coach. “Would you like to be assistant coach for the rest of the games? That way your still part of the team and you know more about football than most of the team put together. I think you know more than even me.”

“Umm, sure.” I said shaking my head. What was even happening? I did not know that much about football but doing that was better than not having a part on the team at all. 

“Anyway, we should probably get going,” Louis said looking at the rest of the lads. “El’s coming over in an hour or so and I should be home before she gets there.”

“Yeah,” Stan said standing up. “Harry and I need to go make our costume for tomorrow night anyway.”

“Hey Zayn.” I said and he looked at me. “Why are you taking your sisters out on the 30th of October? Holloween isn’t until Sunday.”

“Well, my mom wants me to be around for their halloween party.” He said and I nodded at him. Makes sense, his mom was intense about family values. I wasn’t so sure if it wasn’t him who cared more than her but he claimed it wasn’t. He claimed she was crazy but I knew that he worshipped his whole family. I don’t know why he didn’t admit it to me, I guess they all thought I didn’t care about family but man were they wrong. My family meant more to me than anything even if I never saw them.


	13. Chapter 13

**Alex**

“That was a good movie,” I said with my knees on either side of Niall’s waist, I had watched the movie I just had other plans as it came to an end. I leaned down and dragged my teeth across his collarbone slowly and painfully making sure he knew what was happening. I was so thankful that there was no school tomorrow, well I guess today now. “I mean, the ending was splendid and I would never have guessed most of those twists.” I continued dragging my finger up his too clothed stomach lifting his shirt as I went. He had insisted on the movie so obviously he had liked it “I mean, the boyfriend being the murderer. Ohh, that’s some scary stuff for a movie.”

He shivered under me and it only made me want to continue feeling him in new ways and making him feel new sensations. Maybe I was letting my hormones control my actions right now but all I wanted was Niall’s body on mine in every way possible. I was going to make it happen whether it meant me taking the lead or not. 

“Hey hey hey,” he said grabbing my hands in his and pulling them off of his body. I tilted my head looking down at him in confusion as to why he stopped my actions. “I’m sorry but I made a pledge to my dad and to myself…” He looked ashamed for some reason which only confused me more. He had every right to stop me when ever he saw fit.

“And what was that?” I said intertwining my fingers with him. Maybe he didn’t want to go farther than making out but I would settle for something as intimate as holding his hands right here right now. I didn’t care if he didn’t want more, just because part of me wanted to feel him no matter what didn’t mean I had to.

“I’m waiting until marriage,” he said cringing and closing his eyes saying something under his breath after. I just smiled though, if he was embarrassed about saving himself for his one true love he shouldn’t be.

“That’s hot,” I said gripping his hands a bit tighter and kissing his knuckles trying to assure him I wasn’t lying. “Most guys don’t have enough self respect for that nowadays.” He opened his eyes slowly and peered up at me cautiously. “It’s pretty awesome that you would do that, actually most girls don’t either.” I laughed shaking my head.

“Yeah,” he said smiling shyly and bringing our hands down so they laid on his chest over his shirt. “The thing is that I don’t want to stop though.” I laughed a bit, he’s the one that stopped us so why wouldn’t he want to stop? “I really like you and though it’s only been like three months I really want…”

I leaned down and kissed his lips to shut him up. I refrained from grinding my hips down though my body craved the friction because though he may want more he still had made a promise to himself that I wasn’t going to break. I really liked him too, I don’t care how far we would get or even if we go anywhere past this make out session, I was stuck in the now. All I cared about was that he was satisfied now and in the future.

“Alex,” he breathed out when I finally pulled away from him smiling down. He was so beautiful under me his cheeks flushed and eyes bright. “Can you please move you hips like last time we were in this position? Please. I only promised him no sex, I didn’t promise to refrain from pleasure all together…” I nodded bringing my lips to his neck sucking while moving my hips at an agonizingly slow pace just like last time we’d made out like this before Louis had walked in on us. “Ahhh,” he gasped lifting his hips to meet my movements. “Alex, oh my god Alex…” He moaned only making my pace stay the same.

I continued my movements as I sat up and looked him straight in the eyes making sure there was no doubt there. I could feel how aroused he was under my touch but I wanted to make sure he 100% wanted this. I let go of his hands and pulled my shirt off over my head and threw it across the room when I saw nothing but approval there. I took his hands and put them over my bra showing him a good motion to rub. The sensation felt amazing as he closed his eyes and groaned feeling me in a way no one else had. 

Niall grabbed my hips stopping my movements and smiled up at me. I bit my lip and stared right back up into his eyes sure we were done. I didn’t even care that I wan’t pleasured that much, knowing he was comfortable was all that mattered to me. 

I don’t know what he wanted but I knew he knew what he was after at that moment. He quickly flipped me off of him so I was on my back now laying beside him looking at the ceiling. I thought everything may’ve become top much for him. I was starting to doubt everything I had done when he was on top of me reversing our positions exactly.. “It’s my turn okay,” he grunted pulling his shirt off showing me what I wanted to see, though I could’ve dealt with more skin below the belt if he’d offered. “Please tell me if you want me to stop at any point,” I nodded excited for whatever else was about to happen.

He nodded too his eyes crazy while looking up and down my half nude body as I laid beneath him in only a bra and pants. I didn’t feel self conscious under his gaze though, I felt perfect while he looked me over. He slowly started unbuttoning my pants and beginning to pull them down my legs extremely slow. I lifted my hips to help him remove my pants and goosebumps rose in anticipation as he brushed his hands over my skin. I quickly removed my bra and was left in only my underwear in front of him. 

I had only ever been this far with Max. I had given him a hand job but he had only ever seen my mostly naked. I hadn’t allowed him to touch me in any way that would make me vulnerable in front of him, more vulnerable than I already was. 

As Niall’s hand got closed and closer I didn’t have any thoughts of stopping him though. I didn’t want to stop him like I did with Max, I wanted him to have me at my most vulnerable state and I wanted him to abuse it. I didn’t want him to stop or even let me get him in his most vulnerable state right away. All I wanted was his naked hands touching every inch of my body as I moaned out his name loud enough for everyone in this town to hear me. I wanted him to make me beg and feel insecure about everything while also making it known that my trust in him wasn’t going to waste.

***

I sighed and slowly traced my finger over the bare chest under me. I sighed contently as I remembered everything that happened last night. It was so much sexier being able to touch someone who did it out of trust out of fully lust. I didn’t question Niall’s trust in me at all at this point, he had made a pact and almost broke it for me because he cared so much. It was so much nicer than with Max who always just let me touch him because he was horny. 

It was also a new and exciting sensation to trust someone to touch me in ways I’d never even touched myself. I didn’t feel regret or remorse for what happened last night between the two of us, I only hoped he felt the same way when he woke up. I don't know why but I couldn’t help looking up at Niall’s peaceful face while I still knew he was fine. He was such a happy sleeper and my mind only started to go to the worst possible outcomes when he woke up. What if he hated me for getting him so worked up? What if he absolutely regretted everything that he let happen? 

I couldn’t help smiling as his chest moved periodically under me though, all the worries seemed less important as his sleeping body remained calm. He was so sweet to me and made sure he didn’t go farther than he wanted to, right? I hated to admit it but he had grown on my so much in the past while, I hadn’t even thought of Max or his asshole ways in a month until right now. I drew a small heart right above Niall’s bellybutton, I knew it was cliche to do but I couldn’t help m finger. The blanket hit right below his but I knew what was hidden beneath. He had put on a pair of boxers after and that is all he had on under that blanket.

“What’re you doing?” A groggy voice asked from above me and I moved my gaze back up to his previously peaceful face. His eyes were still closed but the smile on his lips told me he was awake and had been indeed speaking to me.

“Nothing,” I said cuddling myself back into his chest and continuing to traces random doodles onto his stomach. 

“So, drawing doodles all over my stomach is nothing?” He asked laughing a bit causing my body to vibrate with his joy. I just shrugged kissing his chest lightly halting the movement of my fingers. “I like this way of waking up a lot,” he sighed rubbing his fingers over his shirt covering my bare body. Goosebumps rose all over me, no matter how innocent the touch her never failed to make my body anticipate what would happen next.

“What are you talking about?” I said laughing a bit now. “We’ve slept in the same bed more than once,” I reminded him as his hand continued moving up and down my side. I returned the favour by peppering kisses on his chest area.

“Yes, but” he said shuddering as I continued placing kisses on his bare skin. “I’ve never had the pleasure of waking up with the most beautiful girl in town in my arms while being woken up by her tracing a heart on my stomach after her giving me the best night of my life.” He said snaking his hand now making its way under the shirt.

“So you don’t regret anything that happened last night?” I said looking up at him again his eyes already watching me.

“No, I would never regret any of that.” His eyes told me he was telling the truth. They were slightly darkened as he must’ve been reliving the night as I had earlier. He still looked so innocent though even after it all. “And may I add that you look sexy as fuck laying there in my shirt.”

“Mhmm,” I said beginning to get up. “But I’m sorry to say I have to remove this oversized shirt and get going.” His lips went into a pout causing me to giggle slightly. “I promised Sophia I would meet her at 2 to start getting ready for the party and it’s 12 now,” I said and he only protruded his bottom lip out farther. “I need to shower because I smell like some sort of sex that I’m sure Sophia won’t appreciate.”

“Shower here,” Niall said adding puppy eyes to his pout. “I might only have manly smelling things but people will know who you belong to.” He began kissing up my arm and the goosebumps rose up again.

“Niall…” I whined as his hands began to pull at my shirt. “Niall, I need to get ready not be seduced back into bed with you.” He laughed and nipped my arm as he continued to pepper it with kisses.

“Come on. I’ll cook you breakfast and all will be fine.” He said bringing my face down to his so that his breath was tickling my face. “You can get all clean and shit and I’ll go make some eggs and toast and then we can cuddle for an hour before you go and get ready before tonight when we’ll kill it at the party tonight.” 

I sighed as he brought his lips closer to mine and quickly turned my face. “Morning breath,” I squeaked as I jumped up. “Now where are your towels so that I can get this over with?” I said putting my hands on my hips and smirking at him. 

“Okay!” He said rolling out of his bed and running over to his closet. “Do you want puffy, long, pink, green, blue?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at his excitement. “Just give me a damn towel and get your nice ass to cooking before I regret this decision.”

He threw a fluffy pink towel at me and held one finger up to me. “Just let me brush my teeth and you know, release myself and then you can go in.”

I laughed again as I flopped back down onto his bed. “Go,” I said covering my eyes with my arm not even caring if the shirt was still covering me. I don’t know how I lucked out this much in such a short amount of time. I went from being the little girl that lived next door to the mysterious bad boy who nobody cared about to feeling like I was the only person in his whole world. There was just something about Niall that I didn’t know I was missing until it was handed to me on a silver platter.

**Niall**

“Niall, you look like a frat boy,” Greg laughed while I was finishing buttoning up my shirt. “I don’t know it I’m proud or disgusted.” He laughed as I just rolled my eyes. He couldn’t see my face but he knew I was doing it. I missed this, being able to talk to him about anything at anytime because we were always together. 

“Where’s Denise anyway?” I asked, it was rare they didn’t Skype me together. They were attached at the hip and it used to make me sick but now I hoped that I would actually find my own Denise. “Can’t she hit you for me?” She wouldn’t, I knew she wouldn’t, but at least I could hope.

“She’s freaking out about wedding plans my little bro,” I shook my head sitting down in my computer chair finally. “They have to be perfect according to her, I’m apparently holding her back but now I can talk to you on Skype without worrying about flower colours or whether or not we want her sister or cousin to be he maid of honour.”

“Haven’t replaced me as your best man right.” I asked and he started laughing. I nodded looking at the screen. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, I guess nothing actually changed while I’ve been away from him.

“Of course not,” he said looking completely serious. “As long as you have a hot piece of arm candy by then, if not I may have to put Sean in your place.” I laughed, I hadn’t seen him in forever either. I missed my best friend. 

“Right, that’s like in over a year now,” I nodded winking at him. He was going to get smart with me, I could get smart right back.

“Hey, the sarcasm isn’t appreciated.” He said shaking his head. 

“Haha, must be exciting.” I said. “I can’t wait for the day when I’m getting flower samples and napkins thrown at me planning a wedding.”

“When you love them it doesn’t matter anymore what they’re throwing at you. She could throw sticks at me and I wouldn’t care.” Okay, maybe it still made me a bit sick. But really, he was going a bit overboard there. “So what are you supposed to be anyway?” Greg asked motioning towards the screen. “Like are you going as a businessman of something?

“Prince Charming,” I said simply. “I’m going as a modern Prince Charming, that way I can look good and be something new.”

“Ohhh, trying to impress Alex?” He asked. He knew everything in my life so it does not surprise me he would ask something like that. 

“Yeah, though she doesn’t need to be impressed.” I responded wiggling my eyebrows at the camera. I know it was wrong to talk about her like that, and ever wronger to talk about what we had together this weekend like this, but boys will be boys right?

“What does that mean Niall?” Greg said kind of suspiciously. “I thought my little brother was the male virgin Mary?” I laughed at that. It was true, that’s what everyone called me back home. I was the rare one who wanted to wait until marriage to sleep with anyone and wait till I was 18 to drink, I ruined the second one already.

“Let’s just say we’re pretty close now,” I said putting my tie around my neck.

“Has Nialler had sex?” Greg sounded extremely surprised and though most guys would be offended by the surprise but I didn’t care. Anyone would be surprised if I had broken my vow to my father, myself included.

“What do you classify as sex?” I asked hoping he wouldn’t answer anything. 

“Well, sex…” He answered laughing causing me to laugh too. That’s one of the things that we had in common, it was not hard to make us laugh.

“Not exactly… But I need to go. See you soon bro.” I said waving at the screen with a slight frown on my face. I didn’t want to say goodbye but the party was starting in like an hour and I had yet to get anything for the party and it took a half hour to get to Lou’s house.

“Love you brother, can’t wait for your to get home!” He said as we hung up. I stood up and looked in the mirror, time to go impress Horan…

***

I looked around quickly, I had been at this party for over an hour and I didn’t want to seem clingy by texting her. I was getting nervous that she ditched or something though.

I saw Zayn standing by the wall with a year 11 grinding on him so I decided to go over there, at least then I would look less like a lonely. “Beer?” Zayn asked holding his can out to me and I just shook my head. I was avoiding alcohol at all possible costs, especially when she was near. My judgement was clouded enough when I was around her without the alcohol.”So, seen your girlfriend yet tonight? She’s hot as fuck tonight.”

“What?” I looked around again, I don’t care if it was just Zayn, nobody should be looking at her and thinking that’s she’s hot as fuck. “Where did you see her?” I asked but when I looked back at him the girl was no longer grinding on him nor was he paying any attention to anything else around him except her lips.

I rolled my eyes and began exploring the party again. There was a lot of “sexy” bunnies, and “sexy” cats, and random superheros. They all looked like idiots but who didn’t on halloween really? They had a right I guess.

I was about to give up when something caught my eye. Louis with his face make up done with Eleanor on his arm. I glanced around the area where he was and finally saw her. Zayn had belittled how amazing she looked. The stomach showing and how those shorts framed her already perfect ass, not drinking was the best idea I’ve had in a while. If she tried to move those hips I was already going to become animalistic.

“Howdy there darling,” I said as I walked over and wrapped my arms around her waist. “Has anyone told you that’s you’re the prettiest girl here tonight?” I asked placing a kiss on her neck and one on her cheek. 

“Hey,” She laughed turning around and kissing me. “Well walk away a bit, I can’t see your costume when you’re flush up against me.” I laughed and walked away a bit. “Okay, I’m going to go with frat boy at some sort of event,” she laughed moving closer to me so we were hugging again. “It’s a really good look, I like it.” She said.

“Really?” I asked moving my lips closer to her ears. “Do you like it more than absolutely nothing being on me?” She gasped slightly as I wrapped my arm around her waist pulling her closer to me. “Because I think I like your outfit but I definitely like you  more in less.” She awkwardly laughed hiding her face into my chest. “Want to go dance or something?” I asked right as the beat to Bad Girls by M.I.A. started.

“I’d love to!” She said pulling me onto the dance floor. I couldn’t help shaking my head at her as my eyes made their way to her ass. It looked amazing in those shorts and the way she was swaying her hips I was slowly losing my self control. She stopped in the middle of the crowd and pulled my hips into hers. She began to move her hips slowly against mine and I started to slowly mimicking her movements. “Like this?” She asked biting her lip and looking up at me through her eyelashes. 

“Mhmm,” I said kissing her forehead and moving my lips to her ear. “You keep moving your hips  like that than you might get a reward later,” I groaned as she added even more friction between the two of us. 

“I don’t want an award later, just to tease you now!” She said moving away and swishing her hips to the beat of the music. “Do you know I don’t love you!” She said smiling over at me. I laughed a bit shaking my head slightly. What was she even going on about. “I’m in love with my friend from home! You should meet him, he’s hot at hell and a total asshole but I’m in love with him!” 

“Oh really?” I said. What was even happening right now? “That’s good to know right now,” I said going to grab her again. She did not need to be out here in the crowd right now, she was obviously quite intoxicated. 

“I’m in love with Max,” she said getting closer to my face and laughing. “I’m so in love with Max and the moment I get out of here I’m going to get back with him. He told me he was in love with me on Skype yesterday, we’re going to get married!” I pulled her right back to her brother and out of the crowd. I needed to get out of there myself.

“Hey Lou,” I said as I pulled him back to Eleanor. “Can I talk to you for a second?” I asked as he still had Eleanor under his arm.

“Sure dude,” He said looking at me like he was giving me all of his attention but I saw his hand moving down to Eleanor’s ass. I already felt sick to my stomach but he was making it even worse.

“Umm, in private?” I said and he nodded like he understood.

“Okay…”  He said as we walked to a more private room. “What’s up bro?”

“You’re sister’s planning on leaving.”

“What?” He asked shaking his head at me. He wouldn’t believe me and I knew that, I should’ve guessed. We were back to where we were before soccer started again. Back to where he blamed me for all of his and Eleanor’s problems even though they’re not my problems, they’re all his problems.

“She’s drunk and told me that she’s planning on leaving to run away with that Max dude from back home. I thought you might want to know.” I said putting a hand on his shoulder. “I know how you wanted to make sure she stayed here and you didn’t want her to leave ever again so I thought you should know what she told me.”

“What? I’ll talk to her tomorrow.” He said hitting my back. “I’ll see what’s up to calm your nerves and make sure she’s not leaving.”

“Yeah, well I’m heading out so see you at practice bro,” I said turning to leave.

“What why?” He said pulling me into his side. “The parties just starting! Why would you leave me now?”

“Just feeling a bit out of it, it’s alright.” I said praying he would leave it alone. “You know, my knee and stuff. No big deal.”

“Okay see you at practice.” He said walking back to Eleanor and his sister. I shook my head turning towards the door. This girl shouldn’t be effecting me this much, especially not when she just got here. I needed to get my head out of the gutter and start focusing on school and getting into school, not some random chick.


	14. Chapter 14

**Alex**

I rubbed my eyes and examined my surroundings. I was obviously in a guys room from the smell of sweat and sex. Girls rooms almost always smelled like flowers or vanilla or something like that, nothing like this. Even my room smelled like cinnamon all the time because of a candle I bought one day. This one smelt like sweat, stinky feet and smoke. It was not a good smell at all, my nose was begging to get me out.

This was a boys room and it was not Niall’s room, it was far too dark and Niall had at least three windows in his room. He claimed he loved being able to see the beach while laying in bed and being able to have the sounds and breeze from the water when he was feeling anxious. His room also smelt exactly like his cologne which I could be drowned in and be happy. My eyes slowly starter to adjust to the room and darkness and I looked around again. 

I saw a bunch of posters on the walls, most of them had to do with sports and a couple had to do with models. They looked familiar but I didn’t know why. There was all the normal furniture and it looked like an extremely rich persons room, it was a room of a boy who didn’t care about money. There was like no free space in the room. 

I felt someone shift beside me and it dawned on me, I was in a random boys bed.  Shit shit shit, what happened last night? What did I do? Fuck, what did I mess up last night? No no no, I never drank and this is why… 

I fell out of the bed screaming when my eyes landed on the apparently half naked man sleeping beside me. No no no, this can’t be a thing. I can’t have slept with a random guy last night, I would ruin the best thing to happen in my life in the matter on one night…

“What? What? What happened!” He said sitting up right after I hit the ground. Ouch, that really fucking hurt. My butt was not a Tomlinson ass like Louis’ was. “Alex?” The random guy said panicked and looking over the side of the bed at me. “Are you okay?”

I looked up and was met with Louis’ clear blue eyes that had sheer panic behind them. “Oh my god,” I said laying back onto the floor and covering my eyes with my arm sighing. “This is your room?”

“Yes?” He said with a little laugh laying back down on his bed and mimicking my actions. “Why don’t you recognize it?”

I didn’t respond, Why would I recognize his room right away? “What happened last night?” I asked almost scared to know the answer but I needed to know what I did. “How did I end up in your bed too?”

“Well I took you home last night when you started crying about how Eleanor was cheating on me and it wasn’t fair I didn’t know about it.” Ooops, I didn’t mean to tell him that. Eleanor must hate me now, there’s one friend gone. “Then when we got home I put you in your own bed and came back here to go to sleep myself, it had been a pretty long night. That’s what happened last night. Then you came in here with your little blanket looking like we were three again and asked for cuddles. I couldn’t deny you, so that’s why you’re in my bed.”

“Anything else happen?” I asked, something must’ve happened with Eleanor and him right? I must’ve ruined something between them. It that’s all I ruined I did something right at least instead of ruining my own life, I was partially fixing Louis’ life.

“You might’ve lost Niall,” wait what? No no no, I did not ruin my first relationship. I did not lose him, he was joking. “You told him you were going to leave with Max the next chance you got and that Niall didn’t matter to you anymore because you loved Max still. You had the hope of returning to your love and that’s all that mattered.” Oh no, oh no, oh no. I hated myself so much right now. What was I even thinking?

“Oh my god, well I’m fucked.” I said climbing back onto his bed and cuddling into Louis’ side. “It makes sense though, I knew that I didn’t deserve him in a million years.” 

He pulled me into him and rubbed my back slowly. “What do you mean? Don’y put yourself down like that please.”

“Yeah yeah,” I sighed cuddling more into his chest. I was glad I had found this at least, I didn’t need Niall or a love life when I had the best brother in the world with me. “I meant with you though, I didn’t really want to know what else I messed with but I guess it’s better now that I know thanks.”

“Eleanor and I fought quite a bit,” I had guessed that had happened. He must’ve been in hell between fighting with her and having me whining and hanging off of him. “After some serious discussion I made a decision and we broke up.” 

“Are you sure that’s what you want? Drunken decisions can ruin your life.” I glanced up and him and he shook his head slightly. 

“I was completely sober last night sis, the whole soccer team was.” Louis said. Little did her know that most of his players had been drinking, I was not going to ruin another one of his dreams today. “I called up Niall after you came in here and fell back asleep. Niall and I talked it out about how I’d been blaming him wrongly forever. He said he was sorry for everything that happened and that we could talk over.” I felt Louis take a deep breath, I felt bad for him. His whole life changed overnight. “And then we talked about you.”

“What about me?” I asked sitting up and looking up at him. Niall and him had discussed me, what about me? What was there even to discuss? 

“That’s bro stuff.” I gave him a look and he laughed a bit. “He really likes you Al, I don’t know how you did it but he really likes you. Niall had never really liked anyone until you came around, then again. You changed a lot of peoples lives.”

“This was all while I was sleeping?” I said laying back down again. This was the worst halloween of my life.

“Yes.” He responding laughing again. “I can’t believe I let one lying bitch almost ruined my relationship with the best friend I’d ever had in my life.”I shook my head. He didn’t let her ruin his life, he loved her.

“Well we let a lot of things happen that we don’t want to happen.” I shrugged. “Why are the lights out by the way?”

He laughed. “Babe, you drank a lot last night. Lights and a hangover don’t got well together, they are enemies.”

I laughed a, and suddenly the need to be sick overwhelmed me. Suddenly there was a garbage can in front of my face. I emptied my stomach into it and gave Louis a weak smile. “It’s going to be a rough day,” he laughed and rubbed my back a bit. 

“Can we just spend it all day in bed?” I asked and he kissed the top of my head gently putting the garbage can back on the floor. 

“Of course baby girl,” Louis said. “Anything to make you feel better, because honestly it’s kind of freaky but I feel it a bit sick because of you.” I closed my eyes and was slowly soothed into sleep by him rubbing my back. I never felt this much love from anyone, not even my mother, well captor. 

**Niall**

“Mom?” I yelled as I walked into the room. “I’m home.”

I saw her face pop out of the kitchen with a frying pan following her. When she saw who it was she dropped the pan and ran over to me. “My, god has returned my baby to me! Why have you been gone for so long baby boy?”

“I’m sorry mom, but I’m home for a week now.” I said leaning down and kissing her cheek. “And then I’ll be at Greg’s for a week which is close to here too.”

“You’ve gotten so tall, come in come in.” I laughed as I stepped farther into the living room which had a new couch since I’d left. “Your room is exactly how you left it.” She said sitting down on the couch. “Greg told me that you wouldn’t want half of the stuff in there but I insisted we keep it there the way you had it because it’s your room and…”

I cut her off laughing as how nervous she seemed. “I’ll go settle in and them want me to make supper for us?”

“You mean you don’t burn water anymore?” She laughed smiling up at where I was standing looking around the room. There was two family pictures left, and one of Greg and Denise from their engagement. It was home and I wasn’t complaining, I had missed it here even if I liked it in London now maybe more than here.

“I’ve become a whole new man mom.” I said beginning to walk out of the room. I heard her sigh from her spot on the couch and I slowed down a bit seeing what she was going to say. My mom rarely kept her opinions to herself.

“Oh my dear, so you have.” She muttered laughing a bit. “You’re just like that dang man,” I smiled knowing exactly who she meant, and it was the best complement someone could give me. 

I walked into my old bedroom and memories quickly flooded my whole body. My first kiss had happened in here, my first boner, my first fit of anger, my first smile and my first time actually crying were all in this room. My mom wasn’t lying when she said it was the exact same as before either. Football trophies and posters lined one wall while sheet music and my instruments lined the other. I quickly looked under my bed, yes they’re still there. All the porn magazines Greg had bought me when he was old enough just to freak me out. I had never actually opened any of them thinking it was a sin but it’s good my mom never found them. 

I sat down on my bed and pulled my phone out of my bag. Harry told me to text him when I arrived and that’s what I planned to do. My phone lit up to show a text from someone else though, someone I didn’t really want to talk to right now. 

_Alexandra the Beautiful: Hey Niall… I know I already ruined everything but I’m so sorry for everything I said to you, I swear I didn’t mean any of it._

_NH: I’m sorry Alex, I just need some time right now. I’m home and I just need to spend some time rediscovering who I am._

That was the truth. I didn’t want to end things or anything but I did want time. I wanted to be able to find the old me again, I wanted to be able to get rid of some of the baggage that I had been carrying with me for years now. I needed to get myself back to the momma’s boy I had been even though it was still less so than Louis. I couldn’t take it farther with Alex until I would be comfortable with taking it farther with myself.

Shitty comparison, I know but still. I didn’t want to rush into things, and obviously she wasn’t quite ready to yet either. I didn’t want something to happen that neither of us wanted or needed in our life right now.

“Hey mom,” I yelled out of my room as I flopped down onto my bed. This was all too familiar being in here with my mom being home all day, usually my dad would be home by 6 p.m. but I guess that was going to change now. “Wanna go out for dinner tonight? I’ll treat you since I’ve deprived you from me for so long, and then I’ll cook you breakfast tomorrow. How does omelettes sound?”

“Where were you thinking for tonight?” She asked showing up in my doorway with a grin ear to ear. I grinned back thinking for a second about where I would want to go to eat. “And omelettes sound lovely, as long their fully cooked and not going to kill me.”

“They’re kind of my speciality. Alex told me that I was the best cook she’d ever been fed by because of my omllettes.” Talking about her to my mom probably wasn’t the best idea but it felt natural. “And I was thinking that pub that dad used to always take us to?”

“You sure about that?” She asked giving me a sympathetic smile. “I know how you feel about his death still… We can go to Nando’s if you’d rather.” I shook my head slightly. I was handling it better than when I left but I knew I was doing better. I was hoping she would see that before I left at least.

“Yeah I’m sure mum, we can invite Greg down and Denise can come so we can have a family dinner again.” I said smiling up at her. “It’ll almost be like old times, and I can have boring old Nando’s back in Donny. Joe’s in only here, there’s none of them there. All they have is wannabe pubs and bars.”

“That sounds amazing, well going out not the wannabe pubs.” She said laughing her grin only growing. I didn’t know that she would be this happy having me at home but I don’t think I’d ever actually seen her this happy in all my life. “I’ll go call Greg and see if he’d like to come and tell him that Denise is always welcome.”

“Good, I’ll get ready.” I said getting up and walking over to where she stood. I towered over her unlike before I left, I must have grown a lot in two years. I didn’t even notice until I was standing over her small body. “Mind if I shower quickly though? I kind of smell bad from all the traveling and such.”

“Of course not!” She laughed walking over to me and attempting a hug. “It’s only like one o’clock and it’s your house, you can do whatever you like here honey.” I leaned down allowing her better access to my neck. “When did you get so tall boy? I always thought you would be shorter than your brother but I guess I was wrong.”

“Okay, okay.” I said lifting her up slightly giving her better access to the hug. “I love you mom, you know that right? Even though your short and slowly aging I love you more every day I’m away. Distance makes the heart grow fonder as they say.”

“Oh my god, I love you too baby boy, I love you too.” She said as I leaned down to kiss her cheek quickly as she quickly covered her mouth to hide the sob that was about to leave her lips as my lips made contact. “I’m so glad you’re home,” she sobbed as I shook my head. 

“Okay, see you after my shower.” I said and she nodded leaving the room. “Oh and mom,” I said causing her to stop and turn back to me. “I’m really glad I’m home too.” She nodded sadly as she walked out of the room quickly. It was really good to be home now, seeing her this happy was amazing.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for how shit this kind of is...

**Alex**

“Please guys!” I whined even getting down onto my knees to beg like I was inferior to them hoping to gain some brownie points with Louis. He liked to see himself as a superior to everyone else. Liam and Louis continued standing there shaking their heads at me though, it didn’t change anything with them. “I need this, I promise you that I’ll come back but I need this now!” I said pretending to start to cry by simply putting my face in my hands and shaking my shoulders a bit, I had never pulled that on anyone but it was bound to work on at least Liam if not both.

“Come on Lou,” I head Liam say causing me to silently high five myself for making him fall under my spell so easily. “We should let her go, you wouldn’t let anyone tell you know if you were in that situation now would you?” Yes, you get him on my side and he can help me get Louis on my side. I didn’t even really need my mom to be involved in any of this, we could send me back for a weekend and she wouldn’t even notice probably unless Louis told her that I was missing because he was my prison guard.

“That’s my problem Liam, she’s not actually crying.” Damn in Louis, why can’t you just fall under my spell? You just need to say yes and I’ll be back before you even know I’m gone dude. “She’s going to say and do anything just to get her way right now, don’t you know how we work in the Tomlinson house by now?”

“Fine, of course the more stubborn doesn’t fall for my act,” I said looking up at the two of them, Liam’s face was priceless when he finally noticed I wasn’t crying. “I always knew you were going to be the harder one to convince, I’m sorry Liam but your much easier to sway. But Louis, like Liam said you would go no matter what if you were in my position right now. You’re more stubborn than I am, and much more strong willed. At least you can trust I’m coming back because I asked, right? I didn’t just leave and run off on my own.” 

“Yes, but I don’t trust them Alex!” He yelled moving his arms in an exasperated manner. I didn’t want this to turn into a fight but if it helped get my point across so be it. “I don’t trust you going back there and not falling under their spell again! I can’t lose you again Alex, you don’t remember what it was like the first time but I remember it vividly! I can’t escape it even now that you’re back!” 

“Louis…” Liam began to warn rubbing his back slowly. I swear British people were much more touchy than anyone at home, well I guess in Dartmouth. This was home now in my opinion though I wasn’t used to saying it yet.

“Liam…” He warned back his eyes never leaving me though. He seemed almost hurt that I was fighting this so much but I wasn’t going to stop fighting this ever. I wasn’t going to be able to be happy until he agreed to let me travel back to Dartmouth alone for one last time. I needed to go back to move on with life.

“Can one of us come with you at least, mom won’t say yes without that promise either?” He said his voice calmed down quite a bit. Who said we were going to get our mother involved in this plan? What she didn’t know didn’t hurt her…

“No, I need to do this alone Louis…” I said but his face told me he wasn’t going to change his mind anytime soon on this subject. “Liam, can Louis and I talk alone for a minute please, I’m sorry…”

“Of course, nobody ever really listens to my opinions anyway.” He said holding his hands up in defeat and looked me straight in the eyes. He didn’t look hurt or actually defeated, he just looked sympathetic. I couldn’t help feel like I was putting so much drama into their lives that hadn’t been there before but I wasn’t able to change any of that. I came with the baggage I came with and it sucked for the people around me.

“Thanks…” I smiled sadly at him as he got up and left. It was quiet for a while giving me time to think of what to say next. I didn’t want this to end up in a big fight between us but I also needed to get my way this one time if never again. I knew I needed this. “Louis, you seem to know me better than I know myself and it goes both ways with us you know?” I began hoping to gain the sympathy card. “I know you’re scared that I’ll leave and you’ll lose me for a second time now but that’s not true! I know too much love now to lose it, I found what I was always trying to replace with Max. I’m not going to let myself lose that anymore…” There we go, I just needed to keep the truth flowing from my lips and I could maybe convince him to let me go.

“But why do…” He began to ask but I held my hand up to silence him. I thought of why I needed to do this alone exactly while I took in a couple shaky breathes. There was no real reason I had to do it completely alone other than the fact I didn’t want Louis or Liam to see the way I used to live, they both lived the life of luxury and I was embarrassed for them to see the place I came from.

“I need this because I need to know that I’m over it.” I said deciding to settle on the broad answer to what he could’ve been asking me. “I need to see that they’ve moved on with their lives so that I can move on with mine. I know that you might not understand this all right now but I can’t move on with my life here without going back.” This was true, I could still move on if I went with him but I really couldn’t stand the thought of that happening. “It’s either going to be me going now with your permission or me sneaking off within the next month. Which would you really rather me do?”

“Fine…” He said grabbing my hand. Touchy people, jeez. He looked into my eyes looking like there was a lot more he wanted to say to me, and I was sure there was. Silence engulfed us again as his brain was working on what he was going to say next. Maybe he was going to try to convince me to not go one last time or maybe he was going to surrender “Go… But if your not back here in two days I’m flying over to find you myself.”

“Thank you Louis!” I said shaking my head and climbing onto his lap to hug him as tightly as I could. “You don’t even understand how much this means to me…” I meant it, I didn’t think he would agree to let me go until we were eighty and dying anyway, then there wouldn’t be any point and I would’ve needed to sneak off earlier behind his back.

“There’s no yelling,” I heard someone mutter as I heard the door reopen. I looked up to see Liam sticking his head in, curiosity must’ve gotten the best of him out in the hall. I guess we handled this argument more maturely than he thought we were going to, than I even thought we were going to. “You guys haven’t killed each other right? All limbs are still in tact and family members not lost in the line of fire?” I laughed standing up and wiping under my eyes. I don’t know at which point I actually began to cry but my face was wet from tears that had fallen during this fight.

“No Li, we didn’t kill each other,” Louis responded for us rolling his eyes. He got up too and walked over to Liam throwing his arm around Li’s shoulder in a way that looked like he was about to explain the meaning of life to him. “Don’t you worry your pretty little mind. But we do need to start looking up plane ticket prices, you have a credit card right?” Louis asked giving me a wink as his other hand went lower and lower down Liams back and slowly slid into his back pocket. He wasn’t…

“Yes but why?” Liam asked completely oblivious to the pickpocketer that was after his wallet right now. I glared at Louis silently begging him to stop his actions right there and leave Liam alone right now, but he just smiled at me like he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

“Good, because we need it!” He said holding it up in the air. “A round trip plane ticket and cheap hotel, here we come!” He said running out of the room. Liam’s face told me the credit card wasn’t supposed to be used for that.

That was confirmed when he quickly chased after Louis yelling “Get back here with that you twat! This is a felony!” I ran after then trying not to laugh, I didn’t know if Louis would actually use the card but he sure loved shaking up things with Liam and making him angry. I didn’t blame him, it was easy and amusing, but this probably wasn’t the appropriate time to be doing that considering Liam was already on edge. 

**Niall**

“What?” I said looking over at Greg who was giving me a weird look. It was like he was waiting for me to break, but I wasn’t going to this time. Last time he saw me in person I was not in the right frame of mind but I was getting better now, I was going to prove that to him today. I was spending a brother day while mum was at work.

“Oh nothing,” He said laughing slightly. I rolled my eyes looking away from him. He was being an idiot right now, but I mean that’s what brothers do right? “Just wondering why you’re not still moping around moms house about something stupid, that’s all you tended to do before you left everyday. It was either some stupid girl or a Derby game or a song that you were writing that was failing.” I hit him around the head as we sat in the stands football field he had taken me to claiming he had a lot of memories with me here. All the derby games I made him come and watch, then the time when I actually got to play on the turf in grade 10. The team who won got to play with the derby team.

“I needed some advice from you, that’s why.” I said looking at the field again. I missed times like this, they had been replaced with the lads though. The lads truthfully were my four new brothers while I was away from home.

“Is it about dad?” He asked and I could sense his eyes on me while he thought of how to phrase what to say next. “Because I didn’t think it could happen but you’re handling it so much better than I thought you would at this point.” He said and I could see him shaking his head beside me in the corner of my eye. “You’re actually handling this decently right now, I thought we would never get the old Niall bak but you’re actually decently normal now. I don’t know what they’re doing to you over there but thank them for me.”

“Oi, shut up bro!” I said hitting him now. It wasn’t what they’re doing to me there, it’s what she’s doing for me over there. Maybe I shouldn’t have given her the cold shoulder or told her I needed a break… She was better for me than I thought and now it was gone.

“So what did you want to talk to me about?” He asked nodding for me to go on. I took a deep breath getting ready for what was sure to be a shit on Niall fest. He was never going to let me live this down but…

“It’s about girls…” I said looking down at my feet.

“Okay, maybe you’re not as changed as I thought…” He said with a little laugh as he nudged my shoulder in what I assume was meant to be a sign of encouragement. “Girls still controlling that little brain of yours.”

“You remember Alex,” I said not even laughing at his comment. It wasn’t girls who were controlling my ‘little brain’ it was her. Alex literally controlled every corner and inch of my brain, no matter how little or big it might be. “I told you about her a couple times on skype, she’s Louis’ long lost sister from Dartmouth.”

“Yeah, you didn’t shut about her forever.” He said laughing again. Okay, that may be true again. I did like to speak of her no matter what mood I was in because she would always put me into a better one. “What happened with her that you need advice? Did something go wrong between the two of you or something?” I bitterly shaking my head. Man, things were constantly going wrong between us.

“I think I lost her forever now…” I said sighing. I wasn’t going to cry, only one person could cause me to cry and I was happy to say it was not her. The day that I would cry over someone other than my dad I would want to die.

“Oh wow, how?” He said turning serious all of a sudden. I looked up at him expecting him to laugh or anything but he was simply looking at me with a look of not pity or sadness in his eyes, only concern. He seemed to be worried that I was the one who was unable to live or function without Alex but I’m not as bad as he would be without Denise in his life. He wouldn’t be able to function without her on his side.

“We’re both coming with too much baggage, it isn’t going to work but I can’t get her off my mind ever and I just want to be able to fix her and have everything be alright again but I can’t even fix myself and it’s fucked.” I said laughing a bit trying to lighten the mood. “I mean my brains so fucked that I’ll never be able to fix what’s going on up here. I don’t know why or how but I fell for her even being the nutcase I am.”

“Your not a nutcase brother,” he said putting his arm around me and pulling me closer to his side and I sighed. He was going to try and lie to me now and tell me I wasn’t a head case. I knew that I was an extreme head case, it didn’t matter if he wanted to try and convince me any differently. “You just lost someone who meant a hell of a lot to you, we all lost him, and you blamed yourself for it all. You don’t anymore though, right? You don’t think it’s your fault that that stupid drunk idiot hit him?”

“I don’t know what I think anymore…” I said leaning my head on his shoulder. This was an incredibly rare moment that I would have a heart to heart with Greg but it was always nice to have a serious conversation like this with him, he always had something interesting and intelligent to actually say about me.

“Do you want to know what I think?”

“That’s kind of why I asked…” I rolled my eyes knowing he could probably feel it. I was asking for advice wasn’t I? Or had I not said that originally and just told him that I wanted him to listen and silently judge the issues I was having right now?

“I think your pushing her away, just like you push everyone away who starts to care for you in a way that makes you uncomfortable. You lost someone who was the only person you let in and now you won’t let anyone in.” I started to get off of him slowly. He was only voicing the truth but I didn’t want to hear that right now, I wanted him to tell me I was doing the right thing by letting her go.

“I let you and mom in…” I argued but I knew that wasn’t true. I can’t remember the last time I had told my mother anything genuinely personal in my life, it was rare that I would.

“Never to the extent of dad. Dad was your glorious saviour, you guys were always closer than I was to either of you.” I hated that he was right, or that he was even just in the general ballpark of right. I trusted them both, I really did, but just after dad died it felt like part of me had died with him and I was missing something important. Nothing was the same as it used to be and it was never going to be the same as it was.

“Greg, you’re an idiot thinking that.” I lied as I tried to hide my need to be okay and not broken while it was impossible not to be.

“You two had music and footy and every other interest. What do I have in common with either of you really? I like school and photography, not what you guys used to talk about. I’m a mammas boy and you were dads.”

“But your my best friend right now.” I said shaking my head slowly. Everything her was saying made sense and was the truth to an extent but he was my best friend right now, not meaning any offence to Liam or anything.

“Only when things become far too much for you to handle alone, I still only hear from you once in a blue moon Niall. You’re closed off from even mom, and now that a girl was slowly gaining your trust you ran.” 

“But I didn’t run, she told me that she was in love with someone else and I decided I needed to clear my mind by coming home finally.” He didn’t know the story, this wasn’t my fault. She left me not the other way around.

“So you ran because you were falling harder than she was? Trust me, she isn’t in love with anyone else. I’ve heard enough to know that she’s successfully fallen for you as much as she’s put you under a spell for her.”

“You’re just jumping to conclusions now Greg…”

“Or maybe I’m telling the truth…” I shook my head again, we needed a change of subject before he got in too deep for my liking and I was forced to bear me heart and soul to him at this old field.

“Remember the first time we came here?” I asked standing up to walk down to the end of the stands. “You caught the soccer ball which almost killed dad by hitting him in the face and then you two got all of the Derby team to sign it for me after the game.”

“It wouldn’t have killed dad if it had hit him, only bruised him a bit. I also remember you being a six year old who was starstruck meeting a team of your idols. I would’ve never been that excited to meet anyone in my whole life.” I laughed remembering that day, 6 year old Niall had no idea as to what was coming up. If I had known what was going to happen 10 years later I would’ve tried to make more of moments like that with dad. I guess now I was just at a loss for those moments, it was really nice being home to relive some of them though.


	16. Chapter 16

**Alex**

“No Luke!” I shouted running away from the snowballs he was throwing at me. There was little kids around and he was only interested in pelting me with snow, making him more immature than most of them. It had snowed so early here for once, that happened about once in a blue moon while I still lived here, which meant only once when I was about four years old and I couldn’t really remember when it happened. I did not pack nearly enough layers for how cold it was considering it wasn’t nearly this cold back in Doncaster right now but Luke seemed to just find that more amusing while he commenced his torture. I know I should be more concerned that I was shivering like a leaf but I was having too much fun to care right now, if I got sick I got sick.

“Say I’m your favourite person ever then!” He laughed while he continued to run after me a snowball in each of his hands. They looked like they were more ice than snow so they would hurt, I didn’t want to slow down and give in. I didn’t even respond to him as I ran around the swing set trying to throw him off my trail but he was too fast for that. “I’ll stop chasing you then, I promise!” I didn’t believe that for a second and he knew that I wouldn’t, he was having just as much fun as I was.

“No! I shall not lie!” I laughed back as I felt the impact of his body tackling mine to the ground, which wasn’t helping my lack of heat situation at all right now. I was silently laughing as he tried to take a slight amount of weight off of me so I didn’t die from lack or oxygen, but he was pretty lanky as it was so I was okay. “I think that was worse than those stupid snowballs.” I sighed hitting his chest lightly,

“Come on Al! You know you miss me more than anyone else!” He laughed sitting up so he was still keeping me trapped by straddling my hips but he wasn’t squishing my whole body under his larger frame. I wasn’t going to lie that this would be awkward with anyone else but Luke was like the brother I had before Louis. He was the one who taught me to stand up for myself and how to really fight back.

“There’s not much competition here dude.” I laughed again as he was just pulling faces at me getting impatient with my lack of responses. I swear he was just a giant five year old in reality who grew at an alarming rate. Everyone saw people from my part of town as ‘hard’ or ‘tough’ but he wasn’t, he was one of the nicest, most genuine people I knew and that’s comparing him to all the people at home as well. He didn’t belong here and I wish I could save him like I was saved but I couldn’t, not yet at least.

“Max?” He said starting to name off people from here in order to prove his point. What he didn’t understand is that this isn’t my home anymore, the UK was my home now and honestly being here I missed my friends from there more than I’ve ever missed people here. He wasn’t going to prove this point this time, he would lose.

“Not even a little bit.” I said, I was anxious to see Max tomorrow instead of excited which I had expected to be. He wasn’t the best friend I thought he was originally, he was an egotistical asshole who I hoped proved me wrong about that now, then maybe I could get myself to actually miss him some. 

“You’re mom?” Luke asked again tilting his head down at me.

“Not my mum,” I corrected. She wasn’t my mother and I was finally coming to terms with that being around my actual mum, there was love there that I had been missing here from her, she was simply the woman who took away what I deserved in the first place and replaced it with something that was totally wrong. She never took care of me, she just took away my childhood from right beneath my feet. “But no, I do not miss that woman.”

“Lucy?”

“Kind of actually, I haven’t run into many whiney bitches where I’m from.” I decided to change my answer before he got the chance to ask anymore questions though because that was a complete lie, there was a few bitchy people in London. “Well, besides one girl who broke my brothers heart in two and a couple of her clique who I kind of hate, but none as bad as Lucy as of right now.”

“So tell me about it, living in the UK. I want to know everything from who you’ve kissed to who you’ve wanted to punch in the face. No one tells me their gossip anymore.” He sounded almost lost asking me the questions so I couldn’t get myself to deny him some answers, I mean I could give him some hope if nothing else. 

“Well the weather is a lot like here over there, I mean it rain’s almost 50% of the time and is cold and hot in a bipolar manner all the time like here. You can never tell what the weather’s going to be like the next minute your out so you have to be prepared for everything a lot of the time. I only hope that someday a genius will engineer a machine that can control the weather finally in order…” I laughed at my pathetic attempt at a joke.

He put his finger over my mouth to make me shut up which thank god he did, word vomit was one of my worst habits but I was nervous how to he would take my new life, I wanted to give him hope but I didn’t want him to think I was forgetting about him while we were worlds apart. “I want to know about the people Al, not the weather you goof ball. Or do you not want me to know about that stuff?” He got slightly sad at the end so I sighed and swallowed my pride, I was here with him. He knew I didn’t forget about him.

“Well, my family’s kind of awesome, and by kind of I mean really awesome. I mean they’re totally loaded and shit which is awesome but their also so nice Luke. It’s so different from life in the trailer park. Like my twin brother is what I always imagined a brother would be like, he protects me like it’s nobodies business and I can go to him whenever I’m having a problem no matter what it is or how big it is, he’ll listen regardless. He reminds me of you a lot of you actually, I think you two would be such good friends and it saddens me that you might never meet.” Luke nodded with a smile, I don’t know if it was knowing that I was in good hands or knowing that I was constantly reminded of him. “My mom is such a sweet woman as well, I rarely ever talk to her but I still know that her heart contains more love for me and all of my siblings than anyone I know. She’s been giving me my space since I got there and it’s just what I needed instead of having someone pestering me.. Then there’s my sister’s who I barely know but the couple of times I’ve seen them they’ve been awesome. They’re all younger than me, there’s four of them, but some of them are way too mature for their age. And then there’s my cousin Liam who might as well be my brother as well, he's become my best guy friend there over the last little while even if he is blood which shouldn’t make for good friends.” I took a deep breath regretting piling it all on him that way, I barely even let him think about what I was saying or how to respond.

“So what about the other new friends? You must have some right, if you aren’t planning on staying back here with us for the rest of our lives. And that sounds like more of a family than any of us have around here.” He said genuinely smiling at me. “Out of any of us you really deserve that Al.”

“Well there’s two girls, one I’m actually fond of but the other is the one messing with my brother who I told you about. The one I like is quite shy all the time and kind to everyone she meets but the other one is a total evil bitch who only cares about herself. She was dating my brother forever and then she tells me that she had cheated on him with another one of my friends who told her to stop before they went too far. I swear, who does that to the ones they claim to love and then hide it from them for a year or more? I can understand his friend trying to avoid the conflict by not telling him but she’s just a bitch for making him keep the secret for that long. But then there’s these three guys who are Louis’ best friends and Luke, I swear I like one of them so much.” Luke got this little smirk on his face and I just wanted to smack it right off. I never spoke about boys to anyone, but I needed to tell someone about Niall. “I can’t even comprehend how much I like him and it terrifies me but he’s just so funny and personable that I don’t even know how to deal with him ever, he always says the right thing and I never do. He has these blue eyes which are so hooded most of the time but then he’ll just open up and it makes my heart flutter every time I see his face. I messed it up with him horribly by telling him I was in love with Max while I was drunk though, it was the worst mistake of my life.”

“You what???” Luke said getting up and pulling me up with him not even letting me continue. It was nice to finally get out of the freeing cold snow and maybe even out of the cold as he grabbed my hand and started pulling me back to his trailer where we had met up this morning when I got here. “Alex, is what you told him the truth? Because if it is you’re lying about one of them.”

“Of course not Luke! If I loved Max would I be rushing to get home and see Niall and Louis and everyone else?” I asking allowing him to drag me into the warmth of his trailer. “Would I be missing Niall like nobodies business even though it’s my fault that we’re separated and that I’ll probably never even get a real relationship with him?” I threw my arms up in frustration, I barely even let myself think of Niall until now and my chest hurt knowing I ruined everything with one little sentence.

“Well then you better get your ass back to your home and tell him that then. I know you love me but it’s kind of pointless to be spilling all of your thoughts and feelings to me. I’m not going to get you out of this mess this time, it’s your turn to fix your problems.” He was right and I knew it, but I couldn’t help wanting to kiss him a bit.

“Luke?” I asked as he pulled me into one of his famous bear hugs. I had missed these, I didn’t know it until now but I truly missed Luke and everything he used to bring to my life. I felt tears begin to sting my eyes as I got the feeling that this might be the last time I’ll ever get one of these hugs.

“Yeah babe,” he responded not letting go but I was okay with that, I would be okay if he never wanted to let go.

“Am I making a mistake by meeting up with Max tomorrow?” He didn’t hesitate before answering me which made me feel slightly better.

“No, of course you’re not. He was your best friend for all your life and you haven’t seen him in a couple months.” He was my best friend but something in my gut was telling me that I shouldn’t go to our meet up but then my brain was telling me I needed to go. I didn’t know what to believe and I just wanted Louis or Niall’s opinion but neither were going to happen, Louis didn’t know I was meeting him and Niall wouldn’t pick up the phone.

“Okay.” I responded quietly stuck in my own head.

“Can I say one thing though Lexi?”

“Yeah Luke?” I responded shaking the bad feeling in my gut away for the time being. I didn’t need to feel guilty for being here, I was doing nothing wrong. I was coming to terms with my past which is what any sane person needs to do.

“Life here isn’t and will never be the same without you. And I hate to think that this is the last goodbye for us but if it is, which it probably is, thank you for being my best friend all this time especially when we were assholes to you. You were like the sister I never had and now that I’m about to lose you I see I didn’t appreciate you.” The tears started running down my face before I could stop them.

“Luke…” I said trying to stop him from making this even harder. I absolutely hated goodbyes, especially ones which seemed to be extremely final. I didn’t want this to happen, I didn’t want our friendship to end like this, I wanted it to end on a happy note if it had to end.

“No Lexi, don’t say this isn’t goodbye because you know when people leave here,” he motioned to the window and around his trailer. “When people leave her they never come back, especially when they go somewhere that shows them that this isn’t all there is in the world.”

“Luke, you were the brother I never thought I would have… Thank you so much!” I began smiling weakly at him. “But I’m not abandoning you here with this life, you deserve so much more so this is not goodbye, okay? This is simply see you later… It’s definitely a talk to you later too. I’ll call you and Skype you and message you all the time.”

“I like the sound of that Al,” He said. “Just a see you later.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *** WARNING, FOLLOWING THERE IS THEMES OF RAPE AND DRUGS AND SEX SO IF YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THAT I SUGGEST YOU SKIP THE REST OF THE CHAPTER AND IF THE AFTER EFFECTS OF ANY OF THIS IS A TRIGGER FOR YOU STOP READING!!***

I stepped out of the cab and looked up at the club that was my apparent destination. It looked like a happening enough place, not exactly my scene but it might lead to a fun night, as they say don’t judge a book by its cover. I looked down the street at the car lights of the traffic which was really heavy for this time of night. Niall flashed in my mind again as I stared at the lights, he would laugh at how outrageous this place was and suggest we leave immediately which I would agree with and follow him to someone more private. He wouldn’t think that this was where we needed to spend our time to have fun.

I was meeting Max here and I thought when I got here some of the anxiety might wash away but I just felt extremely out of place and uncomfortable now. All the girls were in practically nothing which just seemed unneeded, especially considering that it was freezing out. I was apparently overdressed in my skinny jeans, boots and leather jacket which I had thought was cute and effective. I knew Niall would love this outfit, he said he liked when a girl dressed more plain and in something she thought was comfortable but I felt like that didn’t cut it here. Max probably would say I looked like a prude and needed to take something off.

I felt a light tap on my shoulder and slowly turned around. I was almost scared as to who would be behind me, why did someone want my attention here? I obviously didn’t look like a prostitute around the other girls here. I tried to brace myself to turn some creep down but my heartbeat slowed down when I saw Max smirking at me with his hand still raised. 

For a small second my anxiety was completely gone and excitement was all that I felt but it was gone almost as soon as it had came. “Hey,” he said with a glint in his eyes I couldn’t quite identify. He looked like he had something planned which only made my anxiety grow. What did he have planned for tonight that I wasn’t aware of? Why did I even feel the need to be here instead of back in Doncaster?

“Hey,” I said back with a small forced smile but I knew he wouldn’t be able to really tell the difference, it was always Luke who recognized it. The longer I thought about it the more I realized that Max was never really my best friend, he never really cared about me like I cared about him. Luke was the one who was always my best friends and I didn’t treat him right while I had the chance. I really deserve friends like Luke or even Liam, Niall, or Louis. Karma was biting me in the ass and making me lose all of them.

“Let’s go in,” Max tilted his head and I nodded slightly letting the smile be wiped off of my face before he grabbed my hand tightly. It didn’t feel like when Niall grabbed it, it was more aggressive and less caring. I needed to stop thinking about Niall so much, he wasn’t here and I hadn’t tried to fix it yet. I needed to fix it before too long but first I needed to figure all of this out and then I could be completely his. I needed to prove to myself that I was completely over Max and this life.

We went inside and I felt even more out of place than being outside. I looked around and saw all the girls in this club grinding up on all the guys while having themselves groped. It didn’t seem like something I would want in public but I mean to each their own. I took my phone out to check for the millionth time today probably. I wanted Niall to text me, or call me or anything. I was craving a conversation with him more than anything. I knew he wasn’t going to contact me though, I had pretty much told him he was just a pastime for me.

“This club is not that good Max,” I decided to say over the music that was blaring after about 5 minutes of us standing there doing nothing. “I don’t know why you put so much hype over it on the phone.” He took me here because it was the only place that didn’t ID and we were both underage.

“Come get a drink and dance first and then judge it,” he laughed grabbing my hand and pulling me onto the dance floor. I swayed my hips lightly to the beat but I stayed a good distance from Max. He held his finger up and I saw him start to head over to the bar. I looked around the dance floor some more hoping to find anything to make me more comfortable. Some of the guys were attractive but none of them really appealed to me. I knew none of them were a blonde Irish boy who lit up the world with just his smile. None of the girls seemed all that friendly towards other girls either, they only seemed interested in grinding on every single guy here.

I gladly accepted the drink from Max as he walked back up to me and continued to dance like I had been this whole time avoiding contact with him as much as possible. I didn’t drink slow, I wanted to forget about Niall and what a screw up I had become even if it wasn’t smart. Drinking probably wasn’t the way for me to do that but I was already done one drink. I contemplating asking for another drink but I reconsidered it, that wouldn’t be a good idea for me. 

We had probably been dancing for 10 minutes and it wasn’t becoming any more enjoyable to me. “It still kind of sucks!” I laughed over the song feeling like I was floating on air right now. I didn’t want to be feeling like this, I had only had one drink but for some reason I was feeling some sort of high and I wanted it to go away. I took another sip trying to figure out if this drink was stronger than normal or something like that but it was all gone, I had known that. I wanted to stay mostly sober tonight in case my gut feeling was right about something but my mind seemed to want to be fuzzy, I know I wanted to drink earlier but I wouldn’t have forgotten drinking more than one drink. I didn’t know what was happening anymore.

“It is really good Alex, it’s the best cub out here.” Max laughed back looking right back at me with the mischievous glint back in his eyes. As he spoke though the room started to spin even more causing me to clutch onto him to keep myself up, no. This is not what I wanted to happen tonight. What was happening right now? This is not what being drunk felt like, I had been drunk before in my life, in my old life.

“Max… I’m scared, something is wrong…” I said in a shaky voice my knees feeling like they were completely giving out on me. He only laughed and began pulling me through the dance floor and out of the club back into the cold but I couldn’t feel it. I tried to stop my feet from moving with him but I couldn’t, I didn’t have control over any of my body right now. When I tried to scream out for help to anyone who was around us my mouth wouldn’t open, or no noise would come out that would be audible to anyone. I couldn’t tell what was happening right now with my body, I didn’t feel like I had any control over anything. I couldn’t fight him and I was terrified, maybe he was bringing me out to safety from whatever was happening to me. I tried to assume the best but something was telling me I should assume the worst. 

He pulled me into the nearest ally way and ripped my jacket off of my torso. I couldn’t stop the tears that ran down my face as I knew what was coming next, and I knew I should’ve listened to my gut when it told me not to go see him. I shouldn’t have felt like I needed closure from him in order to move on with my life. He wasn’t part of my life anymore, I didn’t need him in it in order to survive.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for years,” he said into my ear as I felt him rip my shirt off over my head and play with my bra. “You’re far too pretty for me honey, and I know that but I can’t help wanting you to be completely mine.” He was running his hands all over my body but I couldn’t feel anything at all. I knew he was removing my boots and my jeans and I just wanted to kick him in the face but I couldn’t, I couldn’t do anything.

I knew what was happening but I couldn’t get my body to actually react to anything. I didn’t want this to happen, I didn’t want to be here. The look on his face told me that he had everything off of me and was ready to start his torture. The tears started to flow down my face faster as I urged my body to stop this, to run, to do anything.

He went fast, though it felt like a million years to me. Without his body holding me up when it was over I slumped to the ground wishing I could just pass out or that this was a joke that I would just wake up from. The sobs took over my body once I saw him turn the corner with all my clothes as a trophy. He had left my purse but I couldn’t even get myself to reach for it, the only thing I had energy for was to cry.

I didn’t know how long I was slumped on the ground naked and alone until someone finally found me. “Whoa,” the guy said taking his jacket off and wrapping it around me. “You okay little girl?”

The only response I could give him was a shaky breath because I didn’t really know the answer for him. Was I okay? Was I ever going to be okay again? There was no way for me to answer that ever again. 

“Anyone you want me to call?” He asked as he kneeled down in front of me examining me like I was broken. It probably looked that way to him, it felt that way to me.

“Liam..” I choked out through the tears in my eyes after a while. My body had gained a little bit of feeling back to it and I wrapped his jacket tighter around me. “Liam Payne.” I said as I pointed towards my purse which had my phone in it. 

He grabbed my phone out of my purse and obviously found Liam in my contacts. I heard him mutter “yeah”, “alleyway”, “naked”, “terrified”, “alone”, and I knew he was explaining what had happened to me the best he could without really knowing anything. He handed me the phone after a couple minutes or stating off everything he seemed to know and I put it to my ear quickly wanting Liam to tell me everything was going to be okay. I couldn’t form words so all he could hear was my sniffles but I knew he wouldn’t want me to explain just yet, he would give me time unlike Louis.

“Alex,” he said sounding like he was panicked which I couldn’t blame him. “I want you to get to the airport as fast as you can, okay little one?” My sobbing slowed down when I heard him use the nickname he’d given to me. Hearing the voice of someone who actually cared for me unconditionally as of right now made everything hurt a little less. “I want you on the first flight here and we’ll figure this out okay? We’ll make this better okay? We’ll fix this.” He sighed into the phone before continuing. “We should never have let you go alone, but we can work through this okay? You will be okay.” I nodded even though he couldn’t see me and looked up at the guy who had found me.

“Anywhere you want to go sweetheart?” He asked and I noticed that he had to be 25 at least and he seemed genuine. “My girlfriend and I will drive you anywhere you want to go.”

“Can you take me to the Holiday Inn?” I asked wiping my face though I knew I was just smearing dirt on it now. “And then the airport?”


End file.
